Charles Dickens's London pubs
Charles Dickens, 1812 to 1870 · Every pub on this page was open and serving when we last checked (August 2026)
No writer put more real London pubs on the page. Dickens walked the city obsessively, drank in it thoroughly, and used its inns as settings, refuges and characters in their own right. Four of his pubs survive, all still serving.
Taken together they make a fine crawl: start at The George Inn in Borough, cross the river to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street, then head east to The Grapes in Limehouse. Save The Spaniards Inn for a Heath day of its own.
Little Dorrit (1855 to 1857)
“If he goes into the George and writes a letter...”
The George Inn
Borough, Southwark · 75-77 Borough High Street
London's last surviving galleried coaching inn, rebuilt in 1677 and now owned by the National Trust. Dickens knew it well and put it in Little Dorrit as the place where Tip Dorrit retreats to write his begging letters.
The cobbled yard and wooden galleries look close enough to Dickens's London that you can squint and lose two centuries. Sit outside if the weather is on your side.
A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
“Drawing his arm through his own, he took him down Ludgate-hill to Fleet-street, and so, up a covered way, into a tavern, and there to a private room, where Charles Darnay was soon recruiting his strength with a good plain dinner and good wine.”
Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese
Fleet Street, City of London · Wine Office Court, 145 Fleet Street
The covered way is Wine Office Court, and the tavern at the end of it is generally agreed to be this one: rebuilt just after the Great Fire of 1666 and reached down a narrow alley off Fleet Street, exactly as Sydney Carton leads Charles Darnay after the treason trial.
Dickens drank here himself, as did Johnson, Twain and Yeats. It's a warren of dark rooms, sawdust-era atmosphere and open fires, and it still feels more chophouse than chain pub.
Our Mutual Friend (1864 to 1865)
“The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, already mentioned as a tavern of a dropsical appearance, had long settled down into a state of hale infirmity.”
The Grapes
Limehouse, East London · 76 Narrow Street, E14 8BP
A narrow riverside pub on a site dating from 1585, widely held to be the model for the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, the crooked tavern at the heart of Our Mutual Friend. Dickens knew Limehouse from boyhood visits to his godfather.
The back deck hangs over the Thames at high tide, and the bar is barely wider than a corridor. Go at low water and you can see the foreshore where Dickens's watermen worked.
The Pickwick Papers (1836 to 1837)
“I'm sure you ought to feel very much honoured at you and Tommy being the only gentlemen to escort so many ladies all the way to the Spaniards, at Hampstead.”
The Spaniards Inn
Hampstead Heath · Spaniards Road, NW3 7JJ
A 1585 coaching inn on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Dickens sends Mrs Bardell and her tea party to the Spaniards Gardens in The Pickwick Papers, where the outing ends with her arrest for Dodson and Fogg's unpaid costs.
Keats is said to have written Ode to a Nightingale in its garden, and the pub turns up again in Bram Stoker's Dracula, which earns it a place on two author pages in this guide.
More authors, more pubs
- Bram Stoker (One pub on the edge of Hampstead Heath, caught up in the hunt for a vampire in Dracula.)
- Arthur Conan Doyle (One Bloomsbury pub opposite the British Museum, disguised as the Alpha Inn in a Sherlock Holmes case.)
- George Orwell (One tiny Fitzrovia pub that served as the prole pub in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and turned up in Keep the Aspidistra Flying first.)
- Graham Greene (One Clapham Common pub, disguised as the Pontefract Arms in The End of the Affair.)
- A. P. Herbert (One 17th-century riverside pub at Hammersmith, lightly disguised as The Pigeons in The Water Gipsies.)
- Samuel Pepys (One Bankside tavern, by tradition the alehouse where Pepys watched the Great Fire consume London.)
If any of these pubs surprises you at the card machine, file a report. If they get it right, nominate them for the Hall of Saints.