Qualla: Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem

Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin Park, CC BY-SA 2.0. Order a pint at the Trip and you may end up drinking inside a wall. The back rooms of Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem are not built so much as carved - the bar leans against the soft sandstone cliff below Nottingham Castle, and the further you push into the building, the more you are inside the rock itself. The pub claims to have been established in 1189, the year Richard the Lionheart took the throne and Pope Gregory VIII called for the Third Crusade. There is no document to prove this date. There is no document to disprove it either. That is part of the appeal.

Image: Colin Park | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem: The Argument About Age

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 2.0. Three Nottingham pubs - the Trip, Ye Olde Salutation Inn and The Bell Inn - all assert that they are among the oldest in England. So does Ye Olde Fighting Cocks in St Albans, which closed briefly in 2022 before being saved, and a small handful of other contenders scattered across...

Image: CC BY-SA 2.0

Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem: Cut Into the Castle Rock

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Lally, CC BY-SA 2.0. The pub is built against the sandstone cliff that supports Nottingham Castle, and the caves behind its walls are demonstrably old - they were used as a brewhouse for the castle, and may date from around the time the castle was built in 1067. That is firmer ground than the 1189 cl...

Image: David Lally | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem: Inside the Trip

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Rogerson, CC BY-SA 2.0. The pub rambles. Front rooms feel like a normal historic pub - timber beams, low ceilings, decent ale - but step further back and the walls become rock, the ceilings vault, and the air takes on the cool damp of a cellar. Drinkers find themselves in chambers carved from solid sand...

Image: Richard Rogerson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem: What Counts as Oldest

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smashman, Public domain. The Trip's claim is not that the current building has stood since 1189 - it has not. The claim is that there has been a drinking-house on this spot, in some form, since then, continuous through the centuries even as the building above it changed. Whether you accept that depends o...

Image: Smashman | Public domain