Pubs with Rooms in Greenwich

Greenwich is the part of London that feels like a town: a market, a church, a high street and a river, all wrapped round the Wren-designed Old Royal Naval College, the Cutty Sark and Greenwich Park, with the Royal Observatory on the hill and the Prime Meridian running through it. The whole of Maritime Greenwich is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it is a short DLR or train ride from the City.

Two of our pubs are in the middle of that. The Admiral Hardy is a Grade II listed pub of about 1836 at the edge of Greenwich Market, with Superior King rooms that look over the stalls. The Mitre is another Grade II listed pub, with a tavern recorded in Greenwich from 1791 and twenty-four rooms close to the station.

Out on the Peninsula, the Pilot carries a tablet reading ‘Ceylon Place, New East Greenwich 1801’, probably the oldest surviving building on the Peninsula, and the row of cottages beside it was used in Blur’s ‘Park Life’ video. East of the town, the Pelton Arms is a corner pub of 1844 with free live music and four simple B&B rooms, and the Angerstein is a Victorian corner pub of 1888 with twenty-one letting rooms. Both are a longer walk from the sights, and the Pelton says the O2 is a short bus or taxi ride away.

Greenwich’s best-known stories are the documented ones. The Royal Hospital for Seamen, now the Old Royal Naval College, took in old sailors from the 1690s, Nelson’s body lay in state in its Painted Hall in January 1806, and the Cutty Sark, launched in 1869, has been in dry dock by the river since 1954. The meridian was fixed as the world’s zero line at an international conference in 1884. Softer lore clings to the waterfront: the whitebait suppers that Victorian ministers are said to have enjoyed at the riverside taverns, and the tales of smugglers and press gangs that every Thames pub seems to have. Those are told rather than proved, so take them with a pinch of salt and a pint. The Admiral Hardy is named for Nelson’s flag captain, who died in Greenwich and is buried in the hospital cemetery near the Maritime Museum.