The Rosemary Branch

About The Rosemary Branch

A pub-and-theatre combination whose site appears on a 1594 archery map, hosted Levellers meetings in the 1640s, and later ran as a Victorian music hall before becoming a fringe theatre in the 1980s.

Few pubs anywhere in London can match the Rosemary Branch’s back-story: the site appears on a 1594 archery map, became a meeting place for the radical Levellers movement in the 1640s (whose members reportedly wore sprigs of rosemary in their hats there, giving the pub its name), and the current 1870s building later ran as a Victorian music hall said to have hosted a young Marie Lloyd and Dan Leno. It hosted left-wing political meetings through much of the twentieth century, was briefly a squat in the early 1990s, and has run since 1993 as a working 76-seat fringe theatre attached to the pub, with Laura Killeen its artistic director since 2021.