From the Highlands of Scotland to the very tip of Cornwall, a collection of some of Britain's best boozers has been put together with the help of the National Pub and Bar Awards. Head judge Tristan O'Hana said: “Pubs are absolutely essential. They are pillars of community; they are hubs, they are sanctuaries.”
The selection includes backstreet boozers, long-standing locals, and gastropubs. Like any good British pub, they all have a bit of history, with tales of bears and Dick Turpin. A karaoke bar also snuck in, aiming to please everyone.
Northern England
In the North of England, the Cricketers Arms in St Helens has been knocking locals for six since 2013. A proper community pub, it offers more than a dozen cask ales, a long list of ciders in the summer, a micro-brewery on site, entertainment, and food.
Boarded up in 2013 with no cask ales since the 1980s, it is now a firm favourite with locals and travelling ale fans alike. Andy and Denise Evans rescued the pub, which became CAMRA's best in Britain just a few years later.
In the Cheshire countryside, the Church Inn at Mobberley also offers a cricket theme. Sitting on a leafy lane between Wilmslow and Knutsford, it has a fire-lit bar, a cricket corner, and a boot room where walkers can rock up muddy and order a pint. The house ale is Mallory's Mobberley Best, named after George Mallory, who died on Everest in 1924, although his body wasn't found until 1999. Born in Mobberley, the son of the vicar, he is remembered in stained glass in the church across the lane, and there's a dining room named after him.
Near derelict when Tim Bird and Mary McLaughlin rescued it in 2013, the 300-year-old inn now pulls people in for the award-winning food and the fireside as much as the beer.
Down in Newcastle, the Crown Posada on the Quayside is one of the city's oldest and most famous pubs. A narrow, Grade-II listed building with three drinking areas, one behind the other, its Pre-Raphaelite-style stained glass may be the work of Edward Burne-Jones. Legend has it a Spanish sea captain bought the place for his mistress, called Posada.
In Hawkshead, one of the Lake District's loveliest villages, you can drink in the King's Arms, which has stood on the square for 500 years. Freshly reopened in 2025 after a refurbishment, it still has a king carved into the bar, holding up the floor above, and log fires. Its eight bedrooms are named after English kings. The village sits between Windermere and Coniston, and the inn has been welcoming drinkers since Elizabethan times.
Out on the Lincolnshire fens, the Leagate Inn at Coningsby has been pouring pints since 1542, the oldest licensed pub in the county. Oak beams, an inglenook fire, a priest's hole, and a huddle of little rooms make it a place to lose an afternoon. Long ago a light was hung on its gable to guide travellers safely across the dark, treacherous fens. Now there is a pizza oven.
Pub Round-Up: North East England
The Kirkstyle Inn and Sportsman's Rest in Slaggyford is a mid-19th century village inn, once the local rectory, in the Pennine hamlet of Slaggyford in the South Tyne valley near the Cumbrian border. It is a Michelin-listed, game-led gastropub where chef Connor Wilson sources everything within 50 miles and prepares the game birds on site.
The Victoria Inn in Durham is a family-run, 1899 Grade-II listed pub near the cathedral. Rated by CAMRA as the best historic multi-room pub interior in the North East, owner Michael Webster bought it off the brewery rather than let them modernise it. Foodwise it just serves toasties.
Station House in Durham is a back-to-basics micropub tucked beneath the railway viaduct. Opened in 2015, it built a reputation for quality beer and cider, with drinks coming straight from the cellar hatch.
Pub Round-Up: North West England
The Horse & Jockey in Chorlton is a landmark black-and-white pub overlooking Chorlton Green in south Manchester. An inn since the late 18th century, its Tudor-style frontage was added in 1908. In October 2025, the team behind Salford's Black Friar relaunched it in partnership with brewer Joseph Holt as Chorlton's first gastropub.
The Farmers Arms in Great Eccleston is a country pub in the market village of Great Eccleston in Fylde, set over two floors with five open fires and a sheltered courtyard. Part of the Seafood Pub Company, it serves fresh fish alongside hearty meat dishes.
The Cumberland Inn in Alston is a 19th century inn on Townfoot at the foot of Alston's steep Front Street, in England's highest market town. Owners Guy and Helen Harmer have run it since 2002, having previously run a pair of 70ft hotel narrowboats.
Pub Round-Up: Yorkshire and the Humber
Whitelock's Ale House in Leeds is Leeds' oldest pub, opened in 1715, hidden down Turk's Head Yard, a narrow alley off Briggate. Upgraded to Grade-II star listing in 2022, it keeps a Victorian interior of mirrors, tiling, and a long marble and copper-topped bar. John Betjeman called it the very heart of Leeds.
The Beverley Arms in Beverley is a Georgian coaching inn in medieval Beverley, opposite St Mary's Church, now a 38-room hotel as well as a pub. Known as the Blue Bell before it was rebuilt in the 1790s and renamed the Beverley Arms, it reputedly stabled the notorious highwayman Dick Turpin.
The Woolly Sheep Inn in Skipton is a Timothy Taylor's inn on Sheep Street, the gateway to the Yorkshire Dales, with 12 en-suite bedrooms. Run by the Keighley brewer, it carries the full range of Timothy Taylor's cask ales and took the Yorkshire and the Humber regional title at the 2026 awards.
The Three Tuns in Stainton is a family-run village pub in tiny Stainton near Rotherham, an off-the-beaten-track local dating to the 1920s, with classic British pub fare at competitive prices and winner of the South Yorkshire county title.
The Beer Engine in Skipton is a micropub on Albert Street, tucked between the town centre and the canal, run by directors Adam Davies and Steven Gregory. It has six hand pumps of changing cask ale.
The Midlands
If you want proof a tiny pub can take on the whole country, start at the Tamworth Tap. In January it was named CAMRA's National Pub of the Year – having won in 2022 and 2023 as well. The first three-times-winner, its Tudor building has a 16th century shop front and a courtyard terrace, beneath Tamworth's Norman castle.
Home to the Tamworth Brewing Company, it keeps eight cask beers on and doubles as a social hub, hosting craft clubs, painting nights, and even bat-watching evenings. Owners George and Louise Greenaway have been given the Freedom of the borough for their work in the town.
In the East Midlands, two England cricketers, Stuart Broad and Harry Gurney, own the Tap & Run at Upper Broughton and the Griffin at Swithland, and their England one-day cap numbers are worked into the logos. In June 2022, laundry caught fire in a tumble dryer and the blaze tore through the roof and first floor of the Tap & Run, leaving it in ruins. More than a million pounds and a year later it reopened, in what undeterred Stuart and Harry called their “second innings”. The Griffin came later, when brewery Everards put the Swithland pub up for sale after 20 years under the same licensees. Harry, a Loughborough lad, was thrilled and honoured to take over the baton.
For sheer oddity, few pubs beat the Bear at Hodnet, a 16th century Shropshire coaching inn opposite the village church. The pub's own history has rebellious monks hiding from church officials in the cellars below, and thrifty publicans running a tax-free smuggling route out of the same tunnels. It also claims the ghost of Jasper Nielsen, a Scandinavian timber merchant who died of hypothermia in the late 1500s after a drink-fuelled row with the landlord. Then there are the bears. In the mid-1970s the publican kept two of them, Madge and Bib, who were later rehomed at Newquay Zoo. An earlier pair had arrived at the end of 1971, brought in by manager Gavin Sutherland to mingle with customers. Bears in a pub would raise eyebrows now. Sutherland shrugged it off, saying they were “not really any more dangerous than dogs”.
In Northamptonshire, the Tollemache Arms at Harrington was named the best pub in Britain at the Great British Pub Awards 2024. The thatched ironstone pub was once the Red Cow, renamed in honour of the Hon Hugh Tollemache, rector here for 58 years. The pub's own account has him shutting the doors every Sunday to drive his parishioners into church instead. During the war it filled up with American airmen from nearby Harrington Airfield, who pressed coins into the wooden beams for luck before flying out. Some of those coins remain to this day.
The Burnt Pig sits down a back street in Ilkeston – three small rooms with pump clips covering every inch of the ceiling. Six cask ales change constantly, the pork scratchings are famous, and regulars turn up with allotment vegetables, eggs, and pork pies for the bar. It was named East Midlands Pub of the Year 2025 and went through to CAMRA's top 16, which is some haul for a hidden away micropub. Simon Clarke, who opened it in 2015, said the name came after a drunken night out. Don't ask!
Pub Round-Up: East Midlands
The Tickled Trout in Barlow is an independent village dining pub on the edge of the Peak District, owned by chef Chris Mapp, who trained under Marcus Wareing at Petrus, before buying his own run-down local. He was named Pub Restaurant Chef of the Year at the Craft Guild of Chefs Awards in 2024. The menu pairs Derbyshire produce with day-boat fish fresh from Cornwall.
The Finch's Arms in Hambleton is a 17th century country inn tucked into the Hambleton Peninsula, which juts out into Rutland Water, with a terrace looking over the reservoir. It boasts beamed ceilings, log fires, 10 rooms, and a menu built on seasonal produce.
Pub Round-Up: West Midlands
The Bull's Head in Craswall is a remote former drovers' inn on the foothills of the Black Mountains, six miles of single-track road from Hay-on-Wye, and one of the last unspoiled drovers' inns in England. It stayed in the same farming family for 125 years until 1998, closed in 2014, and was fought back open by the village in 2021. It is now Michelin-listed, with meat off the owners' own farm.
The Fitzherbert Arms in Swynnerton is a village pub on Lord Stafford's estate, dating to around 1818 on the site of an old smithy, with an old forge as a fireplace and anvils holding up dining tables. It claims the biggest collection of port by the bottle of any pub in the UK. Its 10 rooms are named after fincas in Porto, and it shares owners with the Church Inn at Mobberley.
The Red Lion in Long Compton is a Grade II listed stone coaching inn dating from 1748, in a Cotswold village on the southern edge of Warwickshire, with an inglenook fireplace, log fires, and seven rooms. The Rollright Stones stand on the hill above it, in a village long associated with tales of witchcraft.
The Old Wharf Inn in Stourbridge is a free house in independent hands since 2019, trading in the shell of a long-closed pub called the Moorings Tavern, and looking out over the Stourbridge canal basin and the Bonded Warehouse. It draws strong local support for its rotating real ales, with a garden over the water.
The Old Bush in Callow End is a family-run village local at the foot of the Old Hills near the Malverns, run by Matt and Karen, with a campsite, glamping pods, farm shop, and cafe attached. The garden has a play area, a flock of chickens, and an aviary, and the pub stages a three-day blues festival every August.
South of England
The Gunton Arms, near Cromer on the north Norfolk coast, sits at the end of a long drive through a thousand acres of deer park. Hanging above the fire is the skull of a now extinct Irish elk. Beneath it steaks and chops are cooked on the open flame. Venison comes from the estate and crab comes from Cromer, five miles away. Overall winner of the National Pub and Bar Awards in June, it saw off a shortlist of 252. Art dealer Ivor Braka bought the building in 2009 – then a country house hotel – reopening it as a pub two years later with Stuart and Simone Tattersall, from Mark Hix's kitchens in London. You drink among Braka's art collection of Tracey Emins, Damien Hirsts, and Paula Regos, with a Lucian Freud in the loos. In the 1890s it was the second home to Gunton Hall and a regular guest was Lillie Langtry, mistress of the future Edward VII.
The Bell at Aldworth in Berkshire, a village on the Ridgeway, has no bar, but a glazed hatch, roughly the size of a phone box, with sliding partitions and ebony handpumps, fitted in 1902. The tap room next to it is the reason CAMRA lists the interior as nationally important. It has a figure four painted over the door, a quarry-tiled floor, a one-handed clock, and a shove ha'penny board sitting ready to play. Most of the benches were made in the village carpenter's shop, which the pub's family, who have run it since the 1700s, also owned. Beers now include one brewed in a garden shed by James Macaulay, son of landlord Hugh.
The Pelican in Gloucester is opposite the ruins of St Oswald's Priory, and claims its beams came from Sir Francis Drake's ship when he set sail around the world in 1577, but renamed the Golden Hind mid-voyage. The pub has no kitchen, but there's a food wagon in the courtyard on Gloucester rugby days, or you can bring your own. Rescued by Wye Valley Brewery in 2012, the bar carries up to ten cask ales and a dozen ciders.
The Lion at Ickleton opened in 1728 and Greene King put it on the market in 2023. Ickleton's last pub, the villagers bought it, running a 10-week share offer and raising more than £440,000, with £100,000 more in grants. Collecting the keys just before Christmas 2024, 120 of them spent six months refurbishing it. Reopening in July last year, the cork was popped by Betty Willmott, 93, who's lived on the same street as the pub her entire life.
Pub Round-Up: East of England
The Windmill in Chatham Green, Essex, is a pub dating to the 1820s, built alongside a windmill that worked until 1904, when the last miller Henry Challis started selling beer instead. The sails are long gone but the roundhouse survives as a private dining room. Tom Clarke, who trained under Raymond Blanc at Le Manoir and was head chef at the Michelin-starred L'Ortolan, has run the pub since October 2022 with partner Nancy Witte, who he met there.
The Packhorse Inn in Moulton, Suffolk, is sited beside a 15th century packhorse bridge over the River Kennett, near Newmarket. When the Chestnut Group acquired it from Greene King in 2012 (as the King's Head), it had an estimated 20 landlords in 25 years. Former banker Philip Turner reopened it as The Packhorse Inn in October 2013.
London
The Star by Liverpool Street in the City of London was named best pub in the City at the National Pub and Bar Awards 2026. Its 10,000 square feet stretch over two floors, with four bars, screens throughout, and five themed karaoke rooms in a basement called Karaoke Heaven.
The Devonshire in Soho is a three-floor pub on Denman Street opened in November 2023 by publican Oisín Rogers, Flat Iron founder Charlie Carroll, and former Fat Duck chef Ashley Palmer-Watts, on a site that's been an inn since 1793. Its reputation rests on Guinness, and Oisín reckons the bar pours around 17,000 pints a week, one week hitting 19,500. It retained the Industry's Choice Award at the 2026 awards.
The White Cross in Richmond is a Young's pub on the Thames off Water Lane, known as the pub that floods. On the highest tides, roughly twice a month, the river comes up over the terrace and staff hand out wellies to anyone wanting to leave. Its website publishes live high tide times, so punters can time visits.
The Prospect of Whitby in Wapping has had a pub on the site since around 1520. First called the Pelican and later the Devil's Tavern, it claims to be the oldest riverside pub on the Thames. Rebuilt after a fire and renamed in 1777 after a collier called the Prospect, built in Whitby and moored outside – thus the Yorkshire name. A noose hangs over the foreshore behind the pub, a nod to Execution Dock and to the Hanging Judge Jeffreys.
Pub Round-Up: South East England
The Leicester Arms in Penshurst, Kent, is a Grade-II listed creeper-clad inn opposite the gates of Penshurst Place, named in honour of Robert Sidney, Viscount De L'Isle, when he was made Earl of Leicester in 1618. Brakspear spent more than £1.2m on refurbishment with operators Little and Large Pub Company. It now has 11 en-suite rooms and a rarely-seen shuffle board.
The Welldiggers Arms in Low Heath, West Sussex, is a 300-year-old country inn on the edge of Petworth with an inglenook fireplace, picture windows over a coppice and the South Downs, and 14 bedrooms. It reopened in November 2025 after a refresh, and at the 2026 awards it took the Tyrrells Tyrrellbly Good Taste Award, the headline sponsor's own prize.
The Mason's Arms in Clanfield, Oxfordshire, is the South East Pub and Bar of the Year for 2026, a stone-built Cotswold coaching inn with flagstone floors, lime plaster walls, and a bar crafted from reclaimed church panels. It reverted to its original name in October 2024 – having been the Clanfield Tavern since the 1990s – after Sam and Georgie Pearman's Country Creatures bought it from Marston's.
Pub Round-Up: South West England
The Seagate in Appledore, Devon, is a 17th century inn facing the River Torridge, the only inn on Appledore's quayside, with 17 bedrooms across the pub and a converted sail loft. Landlady Ruthie serves Young's London Original alongside Old Appledore from Country Life Brewery.
The Turk's Head in St Agnes, Isles of Scilly, is the most south-westerly pub in the UK and the only one on the island, a two-storey granite building occupying the former coastguard boathouse 50 metres from the quay on Porth Conger. Its granite slipway is still used by visiting boats. Nautical paraphernalia pervades, and the house beer is Tribute sold as Turk's Ale – named after the Barbary corsairs who raided Scilly in the 16th century.
The Blue Anchor in Helston, Cornwall, is a thatched granite brewpub at 50 Coinagehall Street with slate floors, two small bars, no jukebox, and an indoor skittle alley with its own bar. It's the only pub in the UK to have brewed continuously since CAMRA was founded in 1971, when just four home-brew pubs remained. Historic England reckons it's the oldest operating pub-brewery in the country. Spingo ales are brewed at the rear using water from the pub's own well.
Scotland, Wales & N. Ireland
Tucked down a cobbled close off the High Street in Dumfries, the Globe Inn has poured drinks since 1610 and keeps a deep whisky list, best enjoyed with an Annandale Distillery dram in the snug. The favourite howff, or haunt, of Robert Burns, who drank, wrote, and slept here through his years in the town, four centuries on it still feels made for settling in. Upstairs, in the room where he stayed, Burns scratched five verses into the windowpanes with a diamond stylus. Two of the originals remain, alongside exact replicas of three that were sold off in the 19th century. A tour is available of the Burns rooms, but anyone sitting in his original seat is obliged to recite his poetry or buy the entire inn a drink.
Meanwhile, in Wales, climb the steep lane into the hills above Llanover in Monmouthshire and you reach the Goose and Cuckoo, a Grade II listed cider house with a real fire and an old piano in the corner. It was the only pub in Llanover to survive a cull of local inns by the teetotal Lady Llanover in the 19th century, spared because it sat just beyond her estate boundary. The name, so the story goes, came from a pair who ran it. During a row, one called the other a 'silly old goose.' The other shot straight back with a 'silly old cuckoo' and the pair of insults stuck for good.
Belfast's Crown Liquor Saloon started life as the Railway Tavern in 1826 - acquiring its current look in 1885, when the owner turned Italian craftsmen who'd been working on the city's churches, loose on a pub instead. The result is a Grade A listed gin palace with around ten snugs, each fitted with a gun metal plate for striking matches and a bell push for summoning the next round. The red granite bar is laid out like an altar, with a heated footrest built in, and the gas lamps still work. Look up and the stained glass runs to fairies, pineapples, and clowns. By the 1970s it was heading for demolition. The National Trust bought it in 1978, after a campaign that included John Betjeman, and still owns it today, leasing it out to Nicholson's to run.
Pub Round-Up: Scotland
The Ferry Inn in Uig is a family-run 19th-century inn in the little fishing village of Uig on Skye's Trotternish Peninsula, looking out over the bay. Food is based on fresh seafood landed at Uig pier and served in an intimate five-table restaurant, with ales poured from the Isle of Skye Brewery in the same village.
The Drymen Inn in Drymen is a family-run village inn inside the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, and the traditional first stop for walkers setting off on the West Highland Way. It runs regular live music at weekends.
Pub Round-Up: Wales
Rhos yr Hafod Inn in Llanon is the Wales CAMRA winner, family-run for more than ten years by publicans Angharad Hywel and Paul Jacobs, with two bar areas, a function room, a large garden, and constantly changing real ale from Welsh breweries. It took the Wales Pub of the Year title in 2025 and again in 2026.
Britannia Inn in Llanmadoc is a well-preserved old inn on the north-western tip of the Gower, and the last of four taverns the village once had, run by Martin and Lindsay for over twenty years, with an estuary-view garden and a menagerie of small animals for children. Its lounge beams are reputed to have been salvaged from ships' lanterns.
Pub Round-Up: Northern Ireland
The Dog and Duck Inn in Lisbellaw is a family-run free house in the Fermanagh village of Lisbellaw, five miles outside Enniskillen, pouring from fourteen guest taps. It shares its site with the Glenwinny distillery, which makes small-batch Irish whiskey, rum, and brandy, and it has been named CAMRA's Northern Ireland Pub of the Year and Cider Pub of the Year in both 2024 and 2025.
