St Albans Audio Tour: Historic Pub Crawl

Stops on this tour

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   The White Lion

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   Look for the painted street frontage with its slightly overhanging upper storey and the White Lion nameboard set across the face. The building in front of you keeps a rather old…Read moreShow less

   Look for the painted street frontage with its slightly overhanging upper storey and the White Lion nameboard set across the face.

   The building in front of you keeps a rather old secret. Beneath that refaced front sits a timber-framed house from the end of the sixteenth century, protected today as a Grade Two listed building. That overhang above you is a jetty, where the upper floor projects a little over the one below. In a deed from seventeen thirty-five, this place already answers to the White Lion, yet the same papers quietly preserve an earlier name, the Three Cupps. They also reveal a stranger past: part of the premises served as a meeting house, then a brewhouse, before the pub identity settled in.

   If you glance at the image on your screen, you can see how ordinary the frontage looks for a building with such a restless history. In the seventeen forties, Samuel Long, William Wiltshire, Henry Potter and Moses Machorro all appear in the deeds, buying, mortgaging and rearranging it as valuable Sopwell Lane property. Later, local police disliked the White Lion for a deliciously practical reason: it had three exits, perfect for anyone keen to vanish before capture. More recently, South Herts CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, praised it under landlord David Worcester for the quality of its beer, though a former landlord was later fined after a music-licence breach. If you are planning a return, it generally opens from noon until eleven, with moderate prices.

   The White Lion wears its centuries lightly.

   When you are ready, let the trail lead you on to the Hare and Hounds.

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   Hare & Hounds

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   Look for the low, plastered timber-framed building with its long pitched roof and a stout central brick chimney rising above the front. The Hare and Hounds keeps its age rather…Read moreShow less

   

   Look for the low, plastered timber-framed building with its long pitched roof and a stout central brick chimney rising above the front.

   The Hare and Hounds keeps its age rather discreetly. Officially, Historic England lists it as Grade Two and dates it to the seventeenth century or earlier, but a closer archaeological look in two thousand and seventeen suggested something even more interesting: parts of the structure are older in feel than the basic listing lets on. Above the main block sits a queen-strut roof, a frame with two upright supports bracing the roof, typical of the seventeenth to early eighteenth century. That great chimney near the middle, especially across the western bays, likely belongs to the earliest house here.

   And house is the right word, because this place seems to have grown by degrees rather than appearing all at once. Two bays stretched east in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, a southern extension arrived in the late nineteenth, and another single-storey addition followed between nineteen twenty-four and nineteen thirty-seven. You can sense those layers still stitched together in one lived-in whole.

   There is even a small quarrel over its beginnings: one account places it on maps by sixteen fifty, while archaeology confirms it by seventeen twenty-one. Either way, by the early eighteenth century it was already an old, altered building, standing detached at the edge of Sopwell Lane where coaches entered St Albans and travellers paused before pressing on.

   In recent years, locals crowned it a festive favourite, then welcomed it back after a six-figure refurbishment in two thousand and twenty-three; by autumn two thousand and twenty-four, repair plans reminded everyone that old timber buildings survive only because people keep caring for them. If you decide to return later, it generally opens from noon and prices are moderate.

   So this is not merely a pub, but a threshold that has greeted strangers for centuries.

   When you are ready, let us follow the road onward to the next chapter.

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   Dylans at The Kings Arms

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   On your left, look for a dark timber-framed frontage with rectangular leaded windows and a projecting hanging sign: a crooked, storybook survivor set right on George Street. This…Read moreShow less

   

   On your left, look for a dark timber-framed frontage with rectangular leaded windows and a projecting hanging sign: a crooked, storybook survivor set right on George Street.

   This is the Old Kings Arms, a fifteenth-century building with Grade Two listed status, which means the state protects it for its special historic character. It has held local attention for decades, not simply as a pub, but as a puzzle of medieval fabric. Researchers from the St Albans Society kept returning to it, drawing floor plans in nineteen seventy-one and again in nineteen ninety-six, sketching its timber framework, even photographing the roof space, as if the building still had secrets tucked between the beams. You can see that slightly uneven, time-worn face for yourself.

   

   Then came the wrangles. In nineteen ninety-seven, someone complained about unauthorised internal works. The council stepped in, granted planning permission and listed-building consent, and later required rectification work to put matters right. Even the hanging sign caused a separate battle: 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. By two thousand and three, officials were still chasing more unauthorised signage.

   After closing in the late nineteen nineties and lying dormant for roughly fifteen years, the place returned in twenty fifteen as Dylans at The Kings Arms. Sean Hughes and his family reopened it after the freehold became available, determined to create somewhere they themselves would want to eat and drink close to home. Before that, it had even drifted into life as a French restaurant, so this revival felt like the building reclaiming its own voice.

   It stands here now as a rescued old character, still stubborn, still admired. If you fancy returning, it is moderately priced and usually opens from Tuesday, with Mondays closed.

   When you are ready, continue on and let the next old inn pick up the thread.

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