A three-room St Peter's Brewery tavern on Britton Street, a one-minute walk from Farringdon, dressed to look like an 18th-century coffee house.
The Jerusalem Tavern sits on Britton Street in Clerkenwell, a one-minute walk from Farringdon station, inside a 1720s merchant's house that St Peter's Brewery converted into a pub in 1996. The building was made to look like a Georgian coffee house, with bare boards, candle ledges, and tiled snugs. CAMRA's WhatPub lists it as a Grade II heritage interior worth the detour.
This is a pub for ale drinkers and quiet afternoons, not a group session. The rooms are small, so it fills fast after 5pm with the local design and media crowd. Note that since March 2022 it trades as the Holy Tavern, though the St Peter's tie and the look stayed the same. Anyone after a cocktail list or a big table should keep walking toward Exmouth Market.
The interior is the reason to come. Three small rooms spread across the ground floor and a mezzanine, all bare wood, old advertising signs, and tiled fireplaces. It reads as a film set version of a Georgian tavern because that is more or less what St Peter's built.
Capacity is the catch. There are maybe forty seats, so the trick is to arrive before the after-work rush or aim for a weekend afternoon. On a wet Tuesday it is one of the most atmospheric small rooms in central London.
The pull here is St Peter's Brewery of Suffolk, poured from cask and stocked in the brewery's distinctive oval bottles. Order the St Peter's Best Bitter on cask, around 6 pounds a pint, or work through the bottled range that runs from Honey Porter to Grapefruit. The cream stout is the sleeper pick on a cold night.
Food is simple pub fare at lunch rather than a kitchen to plan around. Time Out has long rated it among the city's best spots for a heritage pint. Skip it if you want craft keg or cocktails; the cask list is the whole point.
Lunchtime brings a steady office and design-studio crowd from the surrounding EC1 blocks. The mood is conversational and low-key through the afternoon. From 5pm the rooms tighten up and drinkers spill onto the pavement.