Temple pubs
Beautiful lawyers' enclave, made famous by Dickens, Umberto Eco or Dan Brown, depending on your literary tastes.
The Cheshire Cheese, 5 Little Essex Street, WC2R 3LD
Getting lost in the warren of side-streets surrounding the Temple brings its fair share of delights, architectural, historical and otherwise. The Cheshire Cheese can certainly be counted as one amongst them. An unassuming Regency building from the outside, the gloriously idiosyncratic interior immediately suggested that I'd found the pub equivalent of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Cozy, weird and wooden, with a look that can't have changed much over the last several hundred years, its quiet and intimate atmosphere invites the casual visitor to stay for the course. Seeming to pull a more diverse crowd than some of its lawyer-centric neighbours, it offers a decent enough selection of real ales, good food and a no-smoking area upstairs that also provides useful extra seating. The decor makes it easy to imagine Charles Dickens popping in here for a pint of Old Thunderer, and in truth the trip through time provided by the surroundings is at least as big an enticement for visiting as the food and beer it offers.
Reviewed by Fred Flange, Feb 2007
Telephone: 020 7836 2347
Nearest station: Temple, Zone 1 (180 metres)
The Edgar Wallace, 40 Essex St, WC2R 3JF
Fantastic selection of real ales and excellent bar staff save what would otherwise be a boring box of a pub. Mostly full of lawyers, due to being only yards away from the Temple's western exit.
Reviewed by Fred Flange, Feb 2007
Telephone: 020 7353 3120
Nearby pubs: The Devereux, 20 Devereux Court, Off Essex Street (20 metres),
Ye Olde Cock Tavern, 22 Fleet Street (180 metres),
The George, 213 Strand (20 metres),
The Cheshire Cheese, 5 Little Essex Street (40 metres),
The Old Bank of England, 194 Fleet Street (150 metres)
Nearest station: Temple, Zone 1 (220 metres)
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