Pubs like this developed in residential areas after the Beer Act 1830 allowed any ratepayer to set up a pub in their home on payment of a small fee. This one is a small pub dating from the 1860s.

The pub used to be the only remaining beer house (beer & wine only) in London, if not the country, with a licence dating from 1869, but that changed in 1998 when whisky etc. started to be sold. The 1869 beer licence was granted because the estate landlord, the future Duke of Westminster, was a temperance campaigner opposed to spirits.

Nowadays there is a pub quiz on the last Sunday of the month. No music and no TVs, except on occasion for certain major sporting events. Rumoured to be the pub where Coronation Street was devised.