A pub that is much larger than it looks from the outside. There is a narrow bar leading to a large baronial rear area. Rebuilt in 1912 by Hoare and Company's Red Lion Brewery, the pub claims from Old Bailey archives to have been in existence since 1216 and to be the oldest licensed premises in London. It, and the surrounding Drury Lane area, was a plague hotspot in the Great Plague of 1665.

Reputed, like many others in the area, to be a pub where condemned men had their last drink and the company of a good (bad) woman; it is on record that the highwayman Jack Sheppard had his last glass here. The White Hart was a favourite emblem of Richard II though the origins of the creature date at least from Alexander the Great's time. Archive photos of this pub as a Charrington's Ales house may be seen at http://www.historypin.org/en/white-hart/