Seven Real Ales Down an Alley You Will Walk Past
A 1546 Fuller's pub hidden off Hatton Garden, where the ale is kept properly, the toasties are the whole food menu, and the chairs are bolted to where they sit.
Ely Court is a passage the width of a doorway between Hatton Garden and Ely Place, and the sign for Ye Olde Mitre hangs at right angles to the wall so you catch it only if you are looking. Most people are not looking. They walk past the mouth of the alley on their way to a jeweller's or a coffee, and the pub — built in 1546 for the servants of the Bishop of Ely — stays quiet behind them until someone who has been before turns down the passage and pushes the door open into a room that smells of hops and old wood.
Inside, it is a Fuller's pub doing the thing Fuller's pubs do best: seven real ales on the bar, five of them rotating guests each week, a kitchen that runs to toasties and pork pies and nothing else, and a set of small connected rooms where the seating is limited and the chairs cannot be moved. Three beer festivals a year. Grade II listed. Trading Monday to Saturday. The pub has decided what it is, which is why the reader has to decide when to come.
The oldest surviving pub in this part of London is also one of the best-kept, and the alley is the whole point.
Editorial Deep
Seven hand pulls run along the bar and five of them change every week, which means the London Pride and the ESB are the constants and the rest is whatever the cellar has taken in — a Kentish bitter one week, something dark from a smaller brewery the next. The ESB at 5.5% is the pour to start on. It arrives with a proper head, served at cellar temperature rather than cold, and the keeping is where this pub separates itself from the average Fuller's house: the lines are looked after, the turnover is fast enough that nothing sits, and the bar staff will pull a taster if you cannot decide between two guests.
At one on a Tuesday the front room is half-full of solicitors from Gray's Inn eating toasties off paper, the light coming in low through the leaded windows, and you can hear the bar staff talking to a regular about the cellar. The snug at the back seats maybe eight and is the seat to take if it is free. By six on a Thursday the same room is standing-room only, the alley outside Ely Court has filled with people holding pints, and the noise inside is a wall.
Weekday lunchtimes are lawyers from the Inns of Court and dealers from the Hatton Garden jewellery trade eating toasties and reading the paper, and the register is quiet and orderly. After six the crowd tips toward City workers who have walked north from Chancery Lane, and on a Friday or a warm evening it becomes a scrum that spills the length of Ely Court. The pub is small enough that the crowd sets the volume completely — at lunch you can hear the till, at seven on a Thursday you cannot hear the person next to you.
The venue lists its ales without prices, so treat this as a pub-tier bill rather than a specific number: two rounds of real ale and a couple of toasties will land in the region a proper Fuller's house charges in central London, which is materially less than any of the cocktail rooms a five-minute walk away in Clerkenwell. The toastie is where the value shows — the kitchen has one job and does it, and you are not paying gastropub prices for a small plates menu you did not want. Bring a card; whether cash is accepted was not confirmed.
This is the best version of a 1546 London ale pub that is still trading as an ale pub, which is a narrower category than it sounds and one Ye Olde Mitre has more or less to itself in this stretch of the city. Come back on a weekday between twelve and two, or on a midweek evening before six, sit in the snug if it is free, drink whichever guest ale the bar recommends, and order the ham toastie. Friday after work is a scrum and Sundays are dark, so plan around both. Groups of eight or more should book the snug through the Fuller's site or call 020 7405 4751; groups up to thirty can take the Bishops Room. Everyone else walks down Ely Court and takes their chances.
Order this
Drink this.
Fuller's ESB or the rotating guest ale the bar recommends, with a ham-and-mustard toastie
“A properly kept 1546 ale pub hidden down an alley off Hatton Garden — go on a weekday.”
Seven real ales, five rotating guests, a Grade II interior on CAMRA's National Inventory, and a kitchen that will make you a toastie and nothing else. The alley entrance off Hatton Garden is genuinely hard to find the first time. Come on a weekday between noon and six, take the snug if it is free, and drink whatever the bar recommends. Fridays after work are standing-room only and the pub is closed Sundays.
The Verdict
