The Seven Stars stands at 53 Carey Street, directly behind the Royal Courts of Justice, and its own website gives its hours as noon to 11pm Monday to Saturday and noon to 10pm on Sunday, seven days a week except holidays. It takes no reservations. It has two small rooms on the ground floor and almost no seating, so the hour you arrive decides whether you get in at all.
It is one of the oldest pubs in London by most accounts, and it is listed grade II. The stretch of Holborn around it is the legal quarter: four Inns of Court, the civil courts, and the barristers, solicitors and clerks who fill the pubs at six o'clock and vanish by nine. Our guide to London's historic pubs covers how to tell a genuinely old interior from an old-looking one, and the Inns of Court and Temple Church page explains the institutions themselves.
This page is about the pub and the drinking quarter around it: what the statutory record actually says about the building, which of the neighbouring pubs are worth your time, and why the whole area empties at the weekend even though this particular pub does not close.
The Seven Stars at a glance
- Address
- 53 Carey Street, Holborn, London WC2A 2JB.
- Hours
- Noon to 11pm Monday to Saturday; noon to 10pm Sunday, except holidays (the pub's own published hours, read September 2026).
- Bookings
- Not taken, for tables or for food.
- Listing
- Grade II, list entry 1244097, first listed 14 May 1974, as "Seven Stars Public House, 53 and 54 Carey Street".
- Hygiene rating
- 3, inspected 27 March 2025 (Food Standards Agency register).
- Nearest stations
- Chancery Lane 7 minutes on foot, Holborn 8, Temple 11 (TfL journey planner).
- Best time
- Noon to 1pm, or after 8.30pm. Avoid 5.30pm to 7.30pm on a weekday.
What the listing says, and what it does not
The building is listed grade II and was formerly known as the Log and Seven Stars. Historic England describes it as "perhaps C17 in origins (dated 1602) with later alterations and additions" - which is careful wording. The 1602 date is the traditional attribution rather than a documented build date, and the entry records it as a date the building carries rather than one the inspectors verified. The pub itself argues for 1602 from the roof beams, the old oak floorboards upstairs and the winder-tread stair.
What is not in doubt is the fabric. Painted brick clads a partial timber frame, under a slate roof: two storeys and an attic, four windows wide, with the right-hand window broader and set in a projecting jetty that Historic England suggests may once have been a separate building. The pub frontage at street level, with its four windows, two doors and flanking pilasters, is Victorian.
Inside, the listing is unusually specific about a small space: two rooms on the ground floor, nineteenth-century bar backs with mirrors, bar counters of the same date, and a corner fireplace of about 1900 in the right-hand bar whose joinery continues as ledges running round the side walls and across the windows. The ceilings have thin beams of the same period masking earlier framing, and the stair to the upper floors is narrow and set behind the main bar.
Read the listing and you know what the room is like before you go in. Two small rooms, Victorian bar counters, and joinery carried round the walls and across the windows as ledges. There is very little furniture, so most people stand with a glass on a ledge, and that is not the pub being unhelpful: it is the interior the listing protects.
Photo: Ethan Doyle White · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · resized
The Great Fire stopped 280 metres away
This is the reason a timber-framed pub survives here at all. The Great Fire of 1666 burned west along Fleet Street and stopped at Fetter Lane, which the pub calculates as about 280 metres from its own door. Everything east of that line was rebuilt in brick under the Rebuilding Acts. The Seven Stars was on the fortunate side, which is why its frame is still partly wooden and why the building next door, Thomas More House, is old enough to hold the pub's small west wing.
The cats, and the thing you may not get to see
The pub has kept a succession of cats, and it names them with dates in its own history: Tom Paine from 2002 to 2012, Ray Brown from 2012 to 2014, Peabody from 2016 to 2019, Clement Attlee from 2018 until the 2020 closures, and The General, in residence since September 2021.
Visitors arrive expecting a cat in an Elizabethan ruff, because that is the photograph that circulates. The pub's own account of its cats does not mention a ruff at all, so treat it as something you might see rather than an exhibit. The cat is a cat, and it will be asleep somewhere inconvenient.
Timing it around the legal day
The Royal Courts of Justice are open to the public from 9am to 4:30pm, Monday to Friday, and its cafeteria is open to the public from 9am to 3pm. When the courts rise, everyone who has been in them needs a drink within five minutes' walk, and Carey Street is where a good number of them go.
| Time | What you will find |
|---|---|
| Noon to 1pm, weekday | Quiet, seats available, food being cooked. The best hour to see the interior. |
| 1pm to 2.30pm, weekday | Busy with lunch, but you can still get to the bar. |
| 5.30pm to 7.30pm, weekday | Full to the pavement. People drink outside on Carey Street because there is no room inside. |
| After 8.30pm, weekday | Emptying fast. By nine it is calm again. |
| Saturday and Sunday | The pub is open but the quarter around it is dead: no courts, no offices, most rival pubs shut. Oddly pleasant. |
The weekend is the correction worth making here. Several pubs in the legal quarter genuinely close on Saturday and Sunday, and Ye Olde Mitre in Ely Court is the best-known weekday-only survivor. The Seven Stars is not one of them: it publishes Saturday and Sunday hours and keeps them. What closes at the weekend is everything else - the courts, the Inns' gardens and passages, and much of the competition.
Food, and the no-booking rule
Food is served during most of the opening hours, from a blackboard that changes daily according to what the kitchen has. There is no printed menu online to plan from, and no table can be reserved at any time. If you want lunch here on a weekday, be at the door by ten past twelve.
The hygiene rating is 3, inspected in March 2025, which the regulator describes as generally satisfactory. We print the date because the rating is older than the two-year window we normally apply, and because at this size a rating is a snapshot of one kitchen on one day. Our page on London places that do not take bookings explains how to work around a no-reservations policy generally, and pub etiquette covers ordering at the bar.
The other pubs of Legal London, and which are open
Within ten minutes' walk there are a dozen pubs serving the legal quarter. These are the ones we are happy to send you to, with the hygiene rating and inspection date from the Food Standards Agency register as we found them in September 2026.
| Pub | Where | Rating | Inspected |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Seven Stars | 53-54 Carey Street WC2A | 3 | 27 March 2025 |
| The Ship Tavern | 12 Gate Street WC2A, by Lincoln's Inn Fields | 4 | 1 December 2025 |
| Penderel's Oak | 283-287 High Holborn WC1V | 5 | 21 May 2026 |
| Yorkshire Grey | 2 Theobald's Road WC1X | 4 | 9 January 2025 |
| Edgar Wallace | 40 Essex Street WC2R, off the Strand | 3 | 17 June 2026 |
Two famous ones are missing from that table on purpose. One well-known pub on High Holborn with a remarkable Victorian interior had not been inspected since January 2024 when we checked, which puts it outside the window we use, and a craft-beer pub a few doors away was rated 1 in March 2025. We do not send readers to a business the regulator has rated 1, whatever it pours. The long hall of a pub with the wooden cubicles on High Holborn appears on route 1 of our historic pub crawls, which is the right page for walking the whole quarter in order.
Hygiene ratings in this quarter run from 1 to 5 within two hundred metres. Look the pub up on the public register before you eat rather than judging by the age of the woodwork. A grade II listing tells you nothing about the kitchen.
Five things to look at between the pubs
The legal quarter rewards looking up, and almost everything worth seeing is free and listed.
- The cast-iron urinal on Star Yard, off Chancery Lane, is listed grade II in its own right (entry 1378811). It is late nineteenth century, cast iron with a translucent glass lean-to roof, with patterned panels, some carrying coats of arms, and a bracket above for a gas lamp that is long gone. It is still in use, and it is the only listed urinal most visitors will ever walk past.
- The Royal Courts of Justice, on the Strand, are listed grade I, together with the screen walls, gates, railings and lamps. You can walk in on a weekday and sit in a public gallery.
- New Square, Lincoln's Inn: numbers 1 to 11 and their railings are listed grade II*, and the square is one of the quietest enclosed spaces in central London on a weekday afternoon.
- The telephone kiosks north of the Royal Courts: a group of four K2 boxes and two later K6s, each separately listed grade II. The K2 is the original 1920s Giles Gilbert Scott design and is noticeably larger than the boxes you see elsewhere.
- The parish boundary stones behind the former stables to number 5 New Square, also listed, marking a line that stopped mattering a century ago.
Lincoln's Inn Fields is thirty seconds from the Ship Tavern, and Sir John Soane's Museum on its north side is free and needs no booking. Our Holborn guide covers the rest of the area, and our list of free things to do in London has more in this direction.
Getting there, and what a round costs
Chancery Lane on the Central line is the closest station, seven minutes on foot by TfL’s own measurement, and it does run on Sundays: older guidebooks say otherwise and we checked TfL's own journey planner for a Sunday in October 2026 to be sure. Temple, on the District and Circle lines, also runs on Sundays and is eleven minutes south. Holborn, on the Central and Piccadilly lines, is the busiest of the three and the easiest to find.
On price, the legal quarter is not cheap: expect central-London pub prices rather than City prices, and our page on what a pint costs in London gives the bands by area. If you would rather drink somewhere with more room, our single-pub pages on the George Inn in Southwark and the one-room pub on Britton Street in Clerkenwell cover two very different alternatives, and traditional British food explains what to order in any of them.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Seven Stars open at the weekend?
Yes. The pub's own published hours are noon to 11pm Monday to Saturday and noon to 10pm on Sunday, with closures on some holidays. This surprises people because several other pubs in the legal quarter are weekday-only, and because the courts and the Inns of Court themselves are shut at weekends.
How old is the Seven Stars?
Historic England's list entry describes it as perhaps seventeenth century in origin and records the date 1602 that the building carries, with later alterations. The pub argues for 1602 from its roof beams, its old oak floorboards and the shape of its stair. Either way it is among the oldest pubs in London, and it survived because the Great Fire of 1666 stopped about 280 metres to the east.
Can you book a table at the Seven Stars?
No. The pub states plainly that reservations are not taken, for drinks or for food. With two small rooms and very little seating, the only way in at a busy hour is to arrive early: before about 12.15pm for lunch, or after 8.30pm in the evening.
Which pub do barristers actually drink in?
All of them, at six o'clock, and the Seven Stars more than most because it is the closest to the back of the Royal Courts of Justice. If you want to see the legal quarter at work rather than at rest, come between half past five and half past seven on a weekday in legal term, and expect to stand on the pavement.
Is there a cat at the Seven Stars?
There has been a resident cat almost continuously since 2002, and the current one has been in place since September 2021. The Elizabethan ruff that appears in photographs is not something the pub advertises, so do not travel for it.
Sources
- Historic England - Seven Stars Public House, 53 and 54 Carey Street, list entry 1244097, grade II (checked September 2026)
- Historic England - Urinal and Attached Gas Lamp Bracket, Star Yard, list entry 1378811, grade II (checked September 2026)
- Historic England - Royal Courts of Justice: The Law Courts, Screen Walls, Gates, Railings and Lamps, list entry 1264258, grade I (checked September 2026)
- GOV.UK Find a Court or Tribunal - Royal Courts of Justice opening times and facilities (checked September 2026)
- Food Standards Agency - food hygiene ratings register, The Seven Stars, 53-54 Carey Street WC2A 2JB, and the other pubs named on this page (checked September 2026)