Rules & Maiden Lane
Why is it significant?
Walk along Maiden Lane until you reach a long frontage with gold lettering and lace in the windows. This is Rules, opened in 1798 by Thomas Rule, and it is the oldest restaurant in London.
Key Facts
| Place | Rules & Maiden Lane |
|---|---|
| Address | 34-35 Maiden Lane, London WC2E 7LB, United Kingdom |
| Geo Coordinates | 51.51080, -0.12320 |
| Part of Walk | Curtain Up: London's West End Theatreland, from the Savoy to Covent Garden and Leicester Square |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk along Maiden Lane until you reach a long frontage with gold lettering and lace in the windows. This is Rules, opened in 1798 by Thomas Rule, and it is the oldest restaurant in London. Through the glass you may glimpse walls crowded with cartoons, playbills and portraits of actors, and a menu that still leans towards game, oysters and puddings.
The story goes that young Thomas Rule had been something of a wastrel, and promised his family he would mend his ways if they set him up in business... so he opened an oyster bar. Over two centuries it became a second home for writers and performers. Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray are said to have eaten here, and later Graham Greene and John Betjeman, while actors from the surrounding theatres came in after the curtain, still wearing traces of their make-up.
The most famous tale is about Edward, Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII, and his lover, the actress Lillie Langtry. Legend says they dined together upstairs, and that a private door was made so the prince could arrive and leave without walking through the restaurant. Nobody has ever proved it, and nobody at Rules is in any hurry to disprove it.
Maiden Lane has a darker theatre story too. A few steps along is the back entrance of the Adelphi Theatre, and on 16 December 1897 the hugely popular actor William Terriss was stabbed to death there by a mentally ill fellow actor who believed Terriss had blocked his career. Theatre folk say his ghost still wanders, and some swear they have seen a figure in old-fashioned clothes in Covent Garden Underground station. And here is a gentler fact: in 1775 the painter J. M. W. Turner was born in this lane, the son of a barber.
Restaurants, ghosts and painters, all in one narrow lane. Now walk back to Southampton Street, turn left, and follow it up into the great open square, then turn to face the tall columns of the church on its western side.