A Grade-II Interior for the Price of a Chain Pint
Holborn's Victorian gin palace pours Sam Smith's beer at Sam Smith's prices inside one of London's finest pub interiors. The trick is knowing where to stand.
The etched glass is the first thing that registers — panels of it, mirrored and frosted, dividing what would otherwise be one ordinary Victorian room into six separate drinking snugs. Dark mahogany partitions run floor to ceiling. Mosaic tiles, brass, marble, the whole 1872 kit. This is one of the best-preserved gin palace interiors in London, and a pint of Taddy Lager inside it costs less than an oat flat white at the coffee shop two doors down.
The Princess Louise has been operated by Samuel Smith's since 1998, which means the beer is brewed in Tadcaster, Yorkshire, at a brewery that has been running since 1758, and the drinks list is whatever Sam Smith's decides to make that year. No guest taps. No cocktail programme. No wine list worth ordering from — the venue itself concedes it isn't known for wine. What it has instead is a Grade II-listed room, a fire in winter, and a pricing structure that predates the current century.
Editorial Deep
Order the Taddy Lager or a cask Old Brewery Bitter pulled from oak in the cellar. The Organic Lager is the other pour worth naming. That is the programme. Every tap belongs to Samuel Smith's, brewed in Tadcaster at a brewery running since 1758, and the range is narrower than most High Holborn drinkers are used to.
The etched glass panels sit at eye height, frosted with acid-cut lettering, backed by mirrors that throw the gaslight-yellow bulbs around the room twice over. Run your hand along the mahogany between the snugs and the wood is warm and heavy, cut with brass fittings that haven't been polished off. Underfoot: mosaic tile. Overhead: a ceiling worth looking up at. There are no televisions. There is no piped music competing with the conversation. In winter the fire is lit.
Legal Holborn, publishing Holborn, a steady stream of curious tourists who have read about the interior, and the CAMRA-adjacent drinker who knows what a Sam Smith's price list looks like. Early afternoon on a weekday you get the last of these, and the room breathes. From six onward the after-work crowd from the Bloomsbury and Chancery Lane offices packs into the ground-floor snugs, three-deep at the bar, and the etched-glass partitions turn a busy pub into a series of separate small crowded rooms where you cannot find the friend who arrived ten minutes before you. The crowd isn't the product here. The room is. The crowd is what you time around it.
Two rounds of Taddy for two is the cheapest round of its kind in central London — Sam Smith's sets one price across the estate and the board is the authority. A round here is still less than a single cocktail at most of the hotel bars a fifteen-minute walk west. There is no cover, no minimum, no service charge on a drink at the bar. The one line on the bill that runs against the pub's own logic is anything that isn't a Sam Smith's beer; the wine and the not-really-cocktails are the only pours where the value math stops working, because the product stops being what the pub is set up to sell.
This is the best version of what a preserved Victorian beer house in central London can be, and it is not trying to be anything else. Come back on a Tuesday at 2pm with a book, a friend visiting from out of town, or a colleague you want to talk to without shouting. Come back on a winter afternoon for the fire. Bring the person who wants to see a listed interior and drink a well-priced pint inside it. Do not bring the group of eight who want cocktails and a wine list — they will spend the evening annoyed. Do not come at 7pm on a Thursday unless a scrum is what you're after.
Order this
Drink this.
A pint of cask Old Brewery Bitter, pulled from the oak in the cellar
“Central London's cheapest Grade II-listed pint. Go before 5pm.”
The Princess Louise is one of the finest surviving Victorian gin-palace interiors in the country, wrapped around a Samuel Smith's tie that keeps pint prices low and keeps the drinks list narrow. Come for the etched glass, the mahogany snugs and the cask Old Brewery Bitter. Come on a weekday afternoon, when the six partitioned rooms downstairs are quiet and the fire is lit in winter. Come knowing that a Sam Smith's pub means no cocktails, no wine list to speak of, no phones encouraged, no music, no TV — a heritage-drinking experience, not a night out with options. Skip it after 6pm on a weekday, when the after-work scrum turns the intimate snugs claustrophobic and finding a friend across the partitions becomes a chore. If the group wants cocktails, walk fifteen minutes west to the palace hotel bars around Piccadilly and pay accordingly.
The Verdict
