Address: 22 High Holborn, WC1V 6BN
Nearest Station: Chancery Lane
Welcome: Good; Service: Good (SIT); Beer: Good; Toilets: Basic
Cost of two pints: £5.80 (Sam Smith’s Old Brewery Bitter)
Guest: Rick; Word: Hogwarts; Person: Father Ted
Rating: 8/10
“You feel as though you’re in history here,” Rick said. “You think there might be a big owl, coming to swoop you up.” For Rick, it seems, Harry Potter is a matter of historical fact, so when he picked ‘Hogwarts’ as his word to describe The Cittie of Yorke, we understood it to refer to the heritage of the building. A sign outside proclaims that a public house has stood on the site since 1430. We discovered from an account by the bar of associations with Henry VI, an earlier incarnation of The Cittie of Yorke as a coffee-house, and of course that London’s most famous drunkard, Charles Dickens, had patronised the site himself. It took considerably more searching to discover that the present building originates only from the 1920s. Nevertheless, its style is in keeping with its former incarnations. One could not possibly imagine the size of the interior from its mock-Tudor façade: it stretches on and on, warehouse-like, a warren of tall, black rooms filled with wooden barrels and a gentle mêlée of happy drinkers. We found ourselves in a large space, a traditional Sam Smith’s bar to our left underneath shelves of casks; a row of alcoves to the right, each adorned with a table, a portrait, and the initials HR in a nod to the pub’s regal associations; and in between a range of tall tables and barrels around which we could stand. Stained glass above bore the Sam Smith’s insignia. Architecturally, The Cittie of Yorke is striking.
Pub Impressions 