England's oldest pub, possibly 1,229 years old, shuts doors due to coronavirus hardships

[brooklynite]

Washington Post

LONDON – The Ye Olde Fighting Cocks pub in St. Albans, England, has seen it all: Since its first brick was laid, possibly as early as 793, near the ruins of an ancient Roman city well before the United Kingdom was formed, the drinking house has survived civil and world wars, famine and the spread of the bubonic plague.

But hardships brought on by the coronavirus pandemic mean the pub — which Guinness World Records has reportedly called England’s oldest, though others contest that title — is shutting its doors.

Christo Tofalli, who took over the lease of the heavily beamed pub in 2012, told The Washington Post that the pandemic and the government’s public health restrictions squeezed his business until he couldn’t meet its financial obligations.

Its insolvency leaves Mitchells & Butlers, which owns the pub, open to seeking new management of the possibly more-than-1,200-year-old business.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

1. There is a Pub in the Finsbury Park neighborhood that opened in the 1840's...

Called the Nicholas Nickleby named after the famous Dickens novel. We drank brew there several times, as it was on its way to the Underground Station, and down the hill from our first Airbnb when we were in London in 2015.

Upon entering, one can smell the antiquity of the place and imagine how it looked in the 1840's. The much older pubs in London have an ambiance all of their own, with names to match.