Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese

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All the monarchs who have reigned in England during the pub's time are written to the right of the door.

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese is an old public house in the City of London, England, located just off Fleet Street, on Wine Office Court.

1 Age
2 Literary associations
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Age

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese is one of a number of pubs in London to have been rebuilt shortly after the Great Fire of 1666. There has been a pub at this location since 1538.^[1] While there are several older pubs which have survived because they were beyond the reach of the fire, or like The Tipperary on the opposite side of Fleet Street because they were made of stone, this pub continues to attract interest due to the curious lack of natural lighting inside which generates its own gloomy charm.

Some of the interior wood panelling is nineteenth century, some older, perhaps original. The vaulted cellars are thought to belong to a 13th century Carmelite Monastery which once occupied the site.

In the bar room are posted plaques showing famous people who were regulars. The pub is also the place where the FDC, a society formed by pupils of Culford School, a public school in Suffolk, first met in the 1930s. This society is a closed group, open only to male prefects who are invited and initiated.^{[citation needed]}

The pub is currently operated by and tied to the Samuel Smith Brewery.

[edit] Literary associations

There are several famous literary figures associated with the place: Oliver Goldsmith, Mark Twain, Alfred Tennyson and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as Dr. Samuel Johnson are all said to have been 'regulars'. However, there is no recorded evidence that Dr Johnson ever visited the pub, only that he lived close by (see Dr Johnson's House).

Charles Dickens had been known to use the establishment frequently, and due to the pub's gloomy charm it is easy to imagine that Dickens modelled some of his darker characters there. The Cheshire Cheese Pub is famously referred to in Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities: following Charles Darnay’s acquittal on charges of high treason, Sydney Carton invites him to dine, "drawing his arm through his own" Sydney leads him to Fleet Street "up a covered way, into a tavern … where Charles Darnay was soon recruiting his strength with a good plain dinner and good wine".

According to the Betty Crocker cookbook, both Dickens and Ben Jonson dined on Welsh rabbit at this pub,^[2] despite the fact that the latter died almost a century before the dish is first known to have existed^[3].

[edit] References

^ http://www.yeoldecheshirecheese.com/index.html
^ (1989) Betty Crocker's Cookbook. Prentice Hall, 184.
^ Oxford English Dictionary, volume W, Oxford University Press, 1928, and the Compact (micrographic) edition of 1971