Old Red Lion Pub & Playhouse

The Old Red Lion Pub & Playhouse in Islington, London, is one of the city's oldest continuous pub locations, operating on St John Street since 1415. Rebuilt in 1899 with red granite pillars, the venue hosted historic patrons including Thomas Paine, Karl Marx, and George Orwell. In 1979, its former upstairs boxing ring was transformed into a 60-seat black box theatre that functions today as a prominent fringe venue.

London Β· from the walk β€œPints & History: Islington to Duke of York Square Pub Walk” Β· Generated

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418 St John St, London EC1V 4NJ, United Kingdom

Which famous historical figures drank at the Old Red Lion Pub in London?

Look up at the ornate red-brick facade of four hundred and eighteen St John Street and notice the carved lettering near the top gable. It reads, "The Old Red Lion fourteen fifteen, Rebuilt eighteen ninety-nine." That date is no marketing gimmick. A tavern has stood on this exact spot for over six hundred years, making this one of the oldest continuous pub locations in London.

Back in fourteen fifteen, when King Henry the Fifth was fighting at Agincourt, Islington was not a dense urban neighborhood. It was a tranquil village of open fields and country lanes. St John Street was part of the Great North Road, the primary highway entering London from the north. Day and night, cattle drovers trudged down this dirt road, herding sheep and cows from northern pastures toward the great meat market at Smithfield! The original timber pub stood alongside cattle pens and a farm called Goose Farm, providing drovers with a warm hearth, a heavy meal, and a tankard of ale before they entered the City.

Because Islington lay outside the legal jurisdiction of the City of London, the Old Red Lion also became a refuge for political dissenters, writers, and artists. In the late eighteenth century, the radical thinker Thomas Paine sat in the pub’s garden writing parts of his revolutionary masterpiece, "Rights of Man." The painter William Hogarth frequented the bar and included the tavern in his seventeen thirty-eight artwork, "Evening." Over time, iconic figures like Dr. Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Karl Marx, and George Orwell all drank here.

The pub archives contain some astonishing tales. Records show a bitter twenty-seven-year legal feud starting in fifteen hundred between the landlord and licensee over sky-rocketing rent, showing that London rent disputes go back centuries! Another record from fifteen twenty-seven describes a fatal sword duel outside, after which the victim's body was stored in the attic for days while waiting for the magistrate to arrive.

The present Victorian building dates from eighteen ninety-nine, complete with red granite pillars and carved lions. But its identity shifted again in nineteen seventy-nine. The upstairs room, which had spent decades as a boxing ring, was converted into a sixty-seat black box theatre. Today, the Old Red Lion Pub and Playhouse is a celebrated fringe theatre venue, launching groundbreaking new plays while honoring over six centuries of London history.

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