Ye Olde Mitre Holborn – London’s Hidden Historic Pub

This bonus episode is our love letter to Ye Olde Mitre, one of London's most hidden and historically rich pubs. When we visited recently, the bar staff gave us one of the most friendly welcomes we've experienced in a busy city center pub. So, this episode is our return gift to you.

Tucked down a narrow alleyway off Hatton Garden, accessible only through a passage barely wide enough for two people. 

We trace the site's remarkable 700-year backstory. From a medieval Bishop of Ely's palace that hosted John of Gaunt, King Henry VII, and King Henry VIII, through the story of Christopher Hatton (the dancing commoner who became Elizabeth I's Lord Chancellor and gave Hatton Garden its name), to the street's evolution into the world's diamond capital and the scene of the 2015 Hatton Garden Heist.

We also explore Ye Olde Mitre's famous jurisdictional quirk. The the land belonged to the Diocese of Ely in Cambridgeshire, the pub was technically not in London for most of its existence, meaning Victorian criminals could outrun the Metropolitan Police by ducking through its alleyway. 

The episode closes with a practical guide to the pub's interior and a warm personal note from Host & Producer Expat Andy after a recent visit. 

Transcript

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There's a pub in London that's almost impossible to find. On our first visit, blinking in rare sunlight as we exited Chancellor Lane tube station and walked up and down Hatton Garden, we repeatedly missed the clue hidden in plain sight. A bishop's mitre on the lamppost just in front of a barely noticeable narrow alleyway between modern building facades. Just two people can squeeze by in the passage connecting Hatton Garden to Ely Place. Brick walls loom on either side, their age evident in the weathered texture and occasional patchwork of paint. The path beneath your feet uneven, worn smooth by countless footsteps. Just as you begin to wonder where this passage leads, it opens a touch. Sunlight spills through, and there, nestled against the wall, is a pub unlike any other. Those who find it regard it as one of the greatest rewards London has to offer. This is ye old Mitre. Persevere when looking for it, because when you do make it through their doors into what looks like someone's living room, they'll give you the best welcome. The story of this pub begins in 1280 when John de Kirby bought land in the Holborn area. He was appointed Bishop of Ely in 1286. When he died in 1290, he left the land to his successors, the Bishops of Ely, to use as their London residence. It was normal in the medieval period for senior church figures to maintain a London base. They needed somewhere to stay, to entertain, and to maintain a presence close to the seat of royal and political power. What the bishops built here over the following century was no modest townhouse. By the end of the 1300s, it was known as Ely Palace, and it attracted some of the most powerful figures in England. John of Gaunt moved in after the Peasants Revolt of 1381 destroyed his own home, the Savoy Palace. He was the fourth son of King Edward III and the father of the future King Henry IV, one of the wealthiest and most connected men of his era. He stayed at Ely Palace until his death in 1399. King Henry VII attended a banquet there in 1495. King Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon attended what the records call an entertainment, a five-day event in November 1531. The records note the considerable amount of food consumed. No one went away hungry. Then a handsome nobody who could dance really well changed everything. Christopher Hatton was a commoner, a tall, well-built commoner, who by all accounts was an exceptional dancer. He caught the eye of Queen Elizabeth I, who appointed him Yeoman of the Guard, had him knighted in 1578, and in 1587 made him Lord Chancellor of England. Since Hatton needed a London base, the Queen applied considerable pressure on the Bishops of Ely to lease him a substantial portion of the palace grounds. The rent the Queen set? ten pounds per year, ten loads of hay, and one red rose at midsummer. The bishop's protests were vigorous, but the Queen's response? Vigorously terse. No one argued with Henry VIII's daughter twice. Hatton moved in and entertained lavishly. He borrowed enormous sums to improve and maintain the estate. The tradition holds that Elizabeth herself danced in the palace garden around a cherry tree with Christopher Hatton. Yes, the same tree whose preserved trunk now sits in a glass case inside the pub to this very day. Visit and read the leaflet available in the pub and the plaque above the glass case. They tell you that the tree marked the boundary between the bishop's garden and the portion of land leased to Hatton. By the time Hatton lay dying in 1591, he owed the crown over forty-two thousand pounds. Elizabeth came to Ely Palace to sit with him. She fed him with her own hand, yet pressed him for repayment. He died shortly afterwards, aged fifty-one. The area still bears his name, Hatton Garden. Here's something worth sitting with. Shakespeare wrote Richard III in 1592. Richard II followed in 1595. Both plays name drop Ely Palace. In Richard III, the Duke of Gloucester tells the Bishop of Ely, My Lord of Ely, when I was lost in Holborn, I saw good strawberries in your garden there. The Ely Palace Gardens were indeed renowned for their strawberries, along with fruit orchards and a vineyard. When Shakespeare's audience heard that line, they weren't receiving a dusty medieval reference. They were hearing about a place at the centre of living memory, a garden associated with a recently dead royal favourite, a man whose relationship with the Queen had been the subject of gossip and fascination for decades. The strawberries weren't just a historical detail. They were a knowing nod to somewhere and someone that everyone in that theatre knew about. The Hatton family held on to the estate for generations after Sir Christopher's death. They sold it off piece by piece. As they did, the jewellery trade followed craftspeople who had long worked in nearby Clarkenwell, gradually establishing workshops along the street. In 1807, Directory Records counted just eleven businesses related to the jewellery, watch, and clock trades in Hatton Garden. By 1907 there were 264. You no doubt noticed a few diamond stores as you walked up and down the street, looking for Yold Miter's hidden alleyway entrance. In 1889, DeBeers, by then controlling the majority of the world's rough diamond supply, agreed to sell its entire output exclusively through a syndicate of ten Hatton Garden merchants, a street already building its reputation for a century, but had it set in stone, or more precisely, in diamond. Which brings us to Easter weekend, April 2015, and a gang of six men in their sixties and seventies. They were known as Mr. Ginger, Mr. Strong, Mr. Montana, the Gent, the Tall Man, and the Old Man. Incredibly, they absailed down a lift shaft and drilled through 50 centimeters of reinforced concrete using an industrial Hilti power drill. Instead of heading to Margate, South End or Brighton, like every other self-respect in Londoner, they chose to spend their bank holiday emptying 73 of the 999 safety deposit boxes at the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company. The prosecuting Queen's Council called it the largest burglary in English legal history. They had been planning it for three years, meeting regularly on Fridays at the Castle Pub on Pentonville Road. They were caught partly because one of them drove to the scene in a distinctive white Mercedes with a black roof captured on 150 CCTV cameras. Old school criminals undone by an old school mistake. Official estimates put the hall at fourteen million pounds. Only four point three million pounds has ever been recovered. As you exit the old miter back into sunlight onto Hatton Garden, cross diagonally across the street to your right. Walk north down Hatton Garden and left onto Greville Street. There on Greville Street with an address of 88 to 90 Hatton Garden was the location of the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company. Following the 2015 heist, the company went into liquidation and the building bought by David Pearl, Vice President of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Mr. Pearl paid a premium £200,000 in exchange for the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company, returning the premises to him complete with the original damaged safe deposit boxes. The building lays empty with rumours of it being used as a wine bar and a restaurant, with drinks being passed through the drilled opening in the vault. Mr. Pearl told London's Evening Standard newspaper there could be a museum around the incident. It could be revamped to have high security and new deposit boxes. All that to a jewelry shop. It's the oldest Catholic church building in England still in active use. It survived the Great Fire of London. A bomb tore through its roof during the Blitz in 1941, destroying the Victorian stained glass windows. It's a must see on your visit to the area. True to form, since, as we now know, this is one of the hardest pubs to find in London. Well, the entrance to the pub is also a little hard to navigate. There's two main pub bars on the ground floor. As we did on our first visit, you'll likely walk straight past the exterior corner entrance to the front bar and head down the external corridor towards the gent's toilet, where you'll find the entrance to the back bar. Entering here you'll be faced with an original off-sales hatch between the two bars. It's a relic of the era when you could buy beer to take home through a hatch in the wall. To your left is the back bar snug, prized seat-in if you're here early enough to snag it. A central bar straddles the back snug and front bar. Off the rear snug bar is ye closet, a room just six feet by ten. Bench seat in on all sides around a single table. You'll have to go back outside, return down the corridor past the gent's toilet to find the corner entrance to the front bar. As you do so, note the stairs leading up to a private function room known as the Bishop's Room. Worth a look if it's not in use. It's in the second front bar that you'll find in the corner to the right of the entrance door the glazed cabinet containing the preserved cherry tree trunk and the plaque above it. The old mitre holds a camera three star rating on the National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors, the highest designation that camera awards. The pub was named East London and City Camera Pub of the Year 2025. It won the Society for the Preservation of Beers from the Woods, London Pub of the Year in both 2013 and 2019. Good Beer Guide 2004 to 2019. Good pub guide 1982 to 2018. Fullers has managed the pub since 2009. Expect real ales, guest ales, scrumpy cider, toasties, sausage rolls, pork pies, food until five. To the team at Yeuld Mitre, thank you sincerely for the warm welcome that you gave us on our recent visit. As we sat enjoying our pints, I watched other tourists enter, and they all got the same friendly welcome. Then we watched them exit to the front room to see the cherry tree. Yeeld Mitre is everything a London pub could be, and this episode is for you. Thank you.