Fitzroy Tavern

About Fitzroy Tavern

The pub that gives Fitzrovia its name, once headquarters of London's literary and artistic bohemia between the 1920s and 1950s.

It opened as the Fitzroy Coffee House in 1883 and became 'The Hundred Marks' in 1887, until tenant Judah Morris Kleinfeld renamed it the Fitzroy Tavern in March 1919. Between the twenties and the mid-fifties it became the meeting point for a bohemian generation of writers and artists — Dylan Thomas, George Orwell, Augustus John and painter Nina Hamnett among them — to the point that the neighbourhood itself took the name 'Fitzrovia' by association with the pub. A 2015 restoration recovered much of its original Victorian character, for which CAMRA awarded it a design prize in 2018. It belongs to the independent Samuel Smith's brewery, which serves its own beer at prices lower than the central London average. Decades later it also became a pilgrimage site for Doctor Who fans, thanks to its links to former figures behind the series.