Popination Antiquation

a series of unhinged personal essays disguised as pub reviews. Today: Ye Olde Mitre.

I’ve been building up to this pub, the highlight of all my London Popinations, and I’m so psyched to share this yank’s view of one of the oldest pubs in the UK, and certainly the oldest pub I’ve ever been in. This is the …sorry, *Ye* Olde Mitre,* and it was a pleasant, cozy, wonderfully historical old old pub that we really didn’t want to leave. It was one of those things that, I think, made both of us yet that much more reluctant to return home to the US.

See, the age of stuff in the US as compared to the UK is astonishing. This one pub is not only older than my home state by several centuries, it’s older than the whole country, by a long shot. And this is just par for the course in the UK. Which you can totally tell when you walk into this pub: it’s so close and small in proportion, it feels like stepping through a portal of time, where all brews were home brews and all the people were this much smaller.

Look, I know: I’m a huge white American with Polish heritage, so yeah of course I don’t fit in this old a school of building, but it’s one thing to know this with the conscious, history-loving part of my brain, and yet another to solve a maze puzzle and duck one’s head into the snuggest of snugs, all old smoothened stone and wooden things and brass. It’s visceral as well as spiritual, to be in a space that old. And I could almost sense Elizabethan ghosts sitting nearby, gossiping over torrid politics over their spectral pints.

I mean, THAT is Ye Olde, wow

Roll For Perception

We had read in our various London guides how difficult this pub was to find, and how tucked away. We naïvely thought: Naw, it couldn’t be that difficult. Not with our GPS guide and etc. I mean, how hard could it be? Then we pretty quickly proceeded to walk in circles in the white-walled courtyard of a posh-ish neighborhood, and could not, could not find where that little elusive blue dot could possibly be irl.

Again: I was so struck through the whole trip, by how the alleys and even streets are so narrow—that’s the main thing that reminds one of how old a city London is. Sure, you’ve got the glass skyscrapers and the Gherkin and all and it is a big, big city. But when you’re walking around it’s so small scale, and winding, and narrow entryways. And steep wooden stairs everywhere, especially in pubs leading to the restrooms. Which my knees did not appreciate. But, like, how could anyone make every single thing there ‘ADA’ compliant? It’d be impossible—you’d have to destroy so much history. It’s a conundrum I have no answer for.

Would you enter?

We finally found a dim, mysterious, and ominous-looking entryway barred with vertical iron that looked old, old. Trepidatious, I ducked under the bar and curiously stepped into the alley. My husband exclaimed some kind of warning—I think he thought I’d be swept away by ghosts, or maybe the shade of Jack the Ripper, but he ended up following me in and through the narrow alley that we couldn’t walk abreast through. But then, suddenly, the dim constraints opened up into a golden afternoon light, and there it was, the placard beckoning us with its quaint ivy and wrought-iron lamp companions, to come in.

Is this an oasis indeed? Or only a mirage?

Ye Olde Mitre? I hardly know her…

I know that Londoners might laugh at my attempts to describe the delight of this magical discovery, but it really was a trip. As a kid, I was a huge Fantasy fan and the puzzle to get here was right up any adventurer’s alley. There was even a strange winding path we had to take to get inside (and of course the mysterious detached bathroom location that I didn’t try and find). Once in, I thought I was about to be asked to join an adventuring party, to reveal my character sheet, or at least roll for initiative.

But it was really so much more than that—the D&D tavern idea is a watered down version. This place is older, more authentic, more like Tolkien’s Green Dragon, and the real life places where people used to come and talk about the king and write theatre reviews about the latest Shakespeare play, and.

But obviously not everything is ancient—there’s electricity, credit card readers, heat and (I think?) air conditioning, and the beer is modern too. It’s a Fuller’s pub these days, which is fine by me. Love me a London Pride. Wait, how old is Fuller’s? No research in any Popinations essays, remember? But if one of you knows, do drop that info in the comments, yeah?

Didn’t manage to snag the snug.

I could’ve sat there for a lot longer, or for every day of our visit at least. It’s that welcome heaviness that is the weight of centuries, of history, that fills the air and the brain with all that. It’s like a therapy weighted blanket filled with history.

*Yes, language nerds: I know that the ‘Ye’ isn’t pronounced like a y, it’s a remnant of an alphabetical symbol called a ‘thorn,’ which would indeed have been pronounced like our ‘th.’ So it’s not ever Ye Olde; it’s always just The Old, and the spelling has been partially preserved in amber. Speaking of:

Ye Olde Mitre fed my love of history, and my love of pubs, both. What’s not to like? And I know I’ve only just barely scratched the surface, if that. Hey, any excuse to return to London again, and again. But if you’re sad that my long journey into the Popinations of Ol’ Blighty has come to an end? Don’t fret!

Next week there’s ONE MORE LONDON PUB to write about! We’re not done yet!!