St Albans Audio Tour: Historic Pubs

Stops on this tour

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   The White Lion

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   Look for a pale, refaced pub front with rectangular windows and an upper storey that leans slightly over the ground floor. A clerk in seventeen thirty-five wrote down White Lion…Read moreShow less

   Look for a pale, refaced pub front with rectangular windows and an upper storey that leans slightly over the ground floor.

   A clerk in seventeen thirty-five wrote down White Lion here, then added a tantalising note: this place had once been called the Three Cupps. That little correction tells you a great deal about St Albans. Names slide, uses change, and the older life survives only in paperwork. This building reaches back to the end of the sixteenth century. Behind the smoother frontage hides a timber frame, and that slight overhang above you is the clue: a jetty, where the upper floor pushes forward over the one below.

   Take a moment with the frontage. Which part feels honest about its age, and which part is keeping its secret?

   The records hint that this was never just a straightforward pub. Part of it served as a meeting house, then a brewhouse, and in the seventeen forties men like Samuel Long and Moses Machorro kept passing it through sales and mortgages. If you glance at the old Sopwell Lane view in the app, you can place this house in that longer chain of ownership and reinvention.

   It also had a sly reputation. Local police worried about the White Lion’s three exits, which gave troublemakers an easy way to vanish. Much later, landlord David Worcester earned praise from the Campaign for Real Ale, C-A-M-R-A, for the quality of the beer, though a former landlord later paid two thousand pounds over a music-licence breach.

   If this place can conceal its frame and even mislay its name, expect other disguises ahead. When you are ready, the Hare and Hounds is about one minute away on foot. If you return later, it keeps long hours and prices are moderate.

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   Hare & Hounds

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   On your right, look for a low timber-framed pub with a pale plastered front, a long sloping roofline, and a stout central brick chimney. The Hare and Hounds looks settled, almost…Read moreShow less

   

   On your right, look for a low timber-framed pub with a pale plastered front, a long sloping roofline, and a stout central brick chimney.

   The Hare and Hounds looks settled, almost modest, yet it is a far more complicated creature than its face suggests. It is Grade Two listed, meaning legally protected for its historic character, and the official description says seventeenth century or earlier. But Roderick Douglas, drawing on Wessex Archaeology’s survey from two thousand and seventeen, noticed something most passers-by never suspect: the oldest surviving roof timbers may be earlier in feel than the basic listing lets on. That queen-strut roof, a timber frame with upright posts bracing the span, belongs to the seventeenth to early eighteenth century, and the great brick chimney in the western three bays, the building’s structural sections, probably belongs to the first house here.

   And it did not stay that first house for long. Two bays joined the east side in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, a south extension followed in the late nineteenth, and another single-storey piece arrived between nineteen twenty-four and nineteen thirty-seven. Each addition kept the place useful, but each one also altered what later generations think they are seeing.

   Its beginning is slightly disputed too: some say it appears on maps by sixteen fifty, while archaeology only confirms it by seventeen twenty-one. Either way, by the early eighteenth century this was already an old, altered building, standing detached at the edge of Sopwell Lane, where coaches entered St Albans and travellers paused before the city properly began. If you glance at the image in the app, you can see that roadside poise for yourself.

   Even now, the work continues: a major reinvention revived it in twenty twenty-three, and repair plans followed in twenty twenty-four. Places like this carried horses, goods, rumours, and weary people through the city’s thresholds; our next threshold, The Old Kings Arms, is about an eleven-minute walk away. If you return later, it is a moderately priced pub, generally open from noon until late every day.

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   Dylans at The Kings Arms

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   Look for the dark timber frame with pale plaster panels, a slightly overhanging upper storey, and a long red-tiled roof pressed above the narrow frontage. The Old Kings Arms…Read moreShow less

   

   Look for the dark timber frame with pale plaster panels, a slightly overhanging upper storey, and a long red-tiled roof pressed above the narrow frontage.

   The Old Kings Arms carries its age rather plainly: a fifteenth-century building, Grade Two listed, which means it has legal protection for its special historic character. Local researchers treated it almost like an unsolved case. The St Albans Society kept plans from nineteen seventy-one and nineteen ninety-six, plus a sketch of the internal framework and photographs taken up in the roof space, all in an effort to record what medieval structure still survived. If you glance at the image on your screen, you can see why.

   

   But admiration was only half the story. Pub names and signs are how a place introduces itself to the street; they hold memory in public view. And here, even that became a civic quarrel. In nineteen ninety-seven, someone complained about unauthorised internal works - changes made without the proper permission for a protected building. The council eventually regularised them through planning permission and listed-building consent, then ordered follow-up rectification. The hanging sign sparked a sharper dispute: two complaints in nineteen ninety-seven, refusals in nineteen ninety-eight, the old sign removed in December nineteen ninety-nine, and a replacement put up in March two thousand. Even in two thousand and three, more unauthorised signage had to be removed.

   Then Sean Hughes stepped in. When he and his family reopened the long-shuttered building in twenty fifteen as Dylans at The Kings Arms, after the freehold became available in twenty fourteen, he said he wanted somewhere he would genuinely enjoy within walking distance of home. So tell me: when a historic pub changes its face, who truly gets the final word - owner, council, or the locals who read themselves into it? Keep that question with you as we continue to the Fleur de Lys, about two minutes away. If you return later, note that it keeps fairly limited weekday hours and sits at a moderate price point.

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