YE OLDE CHESHIRE CHEESE, A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY LONDON PUBYe Olde Cheshire Cheese, was a favourite drinking haunt of Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, James Boswell and many more famous people.
It has been standing on this spot since 1667, a year after the Great Fire of London had destroyed its predecessor. You will find it approximately half way along Fleet Street, on the left hand side, if you are walking eastwards in the direction of St.Paul's Cathedral. Be very careful as you amble along or you could easily miss it. I still very often pass it by and have to retrace my steps, even though I have lived in London for many years and know the city well. The Entrance to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, is up Wine Office Court, which is a small alleyway off Fleet Street where, if you are paying attention, you will see a small sign with the words, "Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese" protruding from the top of the alleyway into Fleet Street.
ABOVE: YE OLDE CHESHIRE CHEESE AND THE PRET A MANGER. If you do miss this sign, then on the left hand side of Wine Office Court is the "Oliver Bonas" shop and on the right hand side of "Ye Olde Cheshire" Cheese is "Pret A Manger". Turn into Wine Office Court where you will see a similar sign at the entrance to the pub. Before you enter, prepare yourself, like thousands of others have before you, to be pleasantly surprised as you pass through the door. As you enter, you find that you have travelled back in time to seventeenth century England, the waft of food and real ale greet you. Your eyes begin to accustom to the dim lighting, bringing into perspective the wood panelling on the walls, dating as far back as the seventeenth century. Then you begin to feel the character of the place. Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese simply oozes with history. There are nooks and crannies everywhere. At different floor levels, are rooms both large or small. Everything seems to be at different angles to everthing else. Nothing appears to be at ninety degrees to anything. Typically medieval to eighteenth century construction.
The same can be said about the stairs, if you can manage to negotiate them without decapitating yourself. Our ancestors must have been about four feet high with a definite 30deg. lean to either the left or the right, funny old codgers. (Sorry Gran'dad,I didn't mean you, I'm talking about the others). As you descend a flight of steps, you suddenly appear on a level above where you were originally. Or so it seems. To me, it is always a very humbling experience to find myself sitting at the very same table, at which Doctor Samuel Johnson(compiler of the first English Dictionary), James Boswell, Oliver Goldsmith and others used to sit around, speaking about and arguing over, the particular topics of their day. 
The same tables, chairs and wall panels can also bear witness to luminaries of the nineteenth century such as Charles Dickens, who was and is well known to have frequented on numerous occasions many more hostelries in London and its outskirts with his literary friends. (we will come across these other taverns as we continue our tour around the city).So often did they frequent them in fact, that you could be forgiven for asking the question, "hold on, when did they get the time to put quill to paper". But write, we should be thankfull they did, leaving us with an enormously rich English Literature heritage. Dickens mentions Wine Office Court in "A Tale of Two Cities" after Darnley is aquitted at the Old Bailey of spying for the French, whereupon being freed he enters a public house up a dark narrow alley leading off Fleet Street. Other famous writers of the nineteenth century to frequent the place included such notables as, William Makepeace Thackery, who wrote" Vanity Fair", "Alfred Lord Tennyson" and "Wilkie Collins" an English novelist and playwright, who was a lifelong friend of Dickens, plus a list as long as your arm of other well known literary figures. More recent visitors were Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K.Chesterton, Yeats and many, many others in search of Dr. Johnson or "The Cheese" See the Plaque in Wine Office Court. Prior to The Great Fire, a tavern or guest house existed, which was part of the whitefriars monastery, later to bacome a victim of Henry VIII dissolution of the monastaries. The ancient vaulting is part of this guest house. Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, came After the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Polly the foul mouthed parrot, who took great delight in mimicking every customer she heard, lived here from 1886 to 1926. Just prior to her demise she took to immitating non stop the sound of champaign bottles being opened in celebration of the end of the First World War when she suddenly flipped over, fell off her perch and died. Her death was announced on the BBC World Service and her obituary appeared in over two hundred newspapers around the world. Such was her fame. Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, Was Never the Same Again. WILL YOU BE VISITING LONDON? Then the London Pass is an essential addition to any London Tourist's MUST HAVE ITEM. It is your passport into over 56 of London's top attractions as well as shopping and restaurant discounts and 120 + page colour guide. Click here to see all the LONDON PASS BENEFITS How to Link to This PageIt will appear on your page as: FOR MORE INFO.ON YE OLDE CHESHIRE CHEESE FOLLOW THIS LINKReturn From Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, To London-Tourist-Attractions. Return From Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, To A-London-Tourist-Guide Home Page.
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