Rebuilt in 1667 after the Great Fire, though a pub has been on this site since 1538 and the cellars may date to a 13th-century Carmelite monastery. Samuel Johnson lived round the corner at 17 Gough Square — whether he actually drank here is debated, but Dickens, Mark Twain, and W.B. Yeats definitely did. Dickens featured it in A Tale of Two Cities. The interior is a warren of rooms connected by narrow staircases: the Chop Room, the Cellar Bar, the Johnson Bar, the Williams Room. You enter through a narrow passage off Fleet Street and the 21st century disappears. Arguably the most historically significant pub on the crawl. Do not skip this one.
A pub has stood at 145 Fleet Street since 1538. The current Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese was rebuilt in 1667, a year after the Great Fire turned the original to ash, and the vaulted cellars underneath may date to a 13th-century Carmelite friary. The literary roll call is absurd — Johnson, Dickens, Twain, Yeats, Conan Doyle, Wodehouse — though the real star was Polly, an African grey parrot who sat behind the bar from the 1880s until 1926, swearing at regulars and shouting their drink orders back at them. When Polly died, obituaries ran in 200 newspapers worldwide. The bird is still there, stuffed in a glass case. You'll want to find her.
Rebuilt in 1667 after the Great Fire, on a site that's had a pub since 1538. Samuel Johnson's house is around the corner on Gough Square, and he's said to have had a favourite seat by the fireplace. W.B. Yeats co-founded the Rhymers' Club here in 1890 — he later called the other poets “Companions of the Cheshire Cheese” in his poem The Grey Rock. Dickens used it frequently and alluded to it in A Tale of Two Cities. Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, and P.G. Wodehouse all drank in this building. The cellars are labyrinthine and may predate the Fire. You enter through a narrow alley off Fleet Street and the interior is a warren of dark-panelled rooms on multiple levels. This is the one that makes you understand why writers needed pubs.