Pubs with Rooms in Westminster, Pimlico and Kensington

This is one of the more spread-out of our London areas, and the three pubs have little in common beyond a postcode that starts SW. Westminster is the seat of government, with Westminster Abbey, Parliament Square and St James’s Park on the doorstep of Sanctuary House on Tothill Street. Pimlico, to the south-west, is a grid of Georgian stucco squares, and Pimlico Road, where The Orange stands, is known for its interiors and antiques shops. Earl’s Court, further west in Kensington, is a busy district around its station, and The Blackbird is right beside it.

The pubs reflect that. Sanctuary House is not an old pub, for all its name: CAMRA describes it as a converted early 20th-century office building, now a Fuller’s Ale & Pie house with a hotel attached. The Orange is the heritage choice, a Grade II listed corner pub rebuilt in 1845-6, with four rooms above a ground-floor bar. The Blackbird, a former bank turned Fuller’s pub, added nine bedrooms in 2019.

We have grouped these three because pubs with rooms are thin on the ground here, not because they sit close together. The pubs are busy, so book early and ask about noise.

The lore here is a patchwork. Westminster’s sanctuary was a real medieval privilege that let people fleeing the law claim the Abbey’s protection until it was finally abolished under James I, and the surrounding Tothill Fields were, by CAMRA’s account, the scene of trials by combat and 18th-century duels. Pimlico’s best-known tale is better recorded: the eight-year-old Mozart stayed at 180 Ebury Street in 1764 and wrote his first symphony there, and a statue of him stands in Orange Square, near The Orange. The Georgian Chelsea Bun House, popular with George II and George III, once stood at the western end of Pimlico Road. Stories that Sanctuary House sits above secret tunnels are told by the hotel itself, and we have no evidence for them.