Liverpool’s late-Victorian and Edwardian brewers did not build pubs so much as stage sets. Competing for the trade of a booming port, Robert Cain and his rivals commissioned architects, sculptors and glassmakers, and several of the buildings they paid for are still pouring today. Most are within a fifteen-minute walk of Lime Street station, and a handful are among the most important pub interiors in England.
The Philharmonic Dining Rooms, Hope Street
The Philharmonic Dining Rooms was built between 1898 and 1900 for Robert Cain & Sons to designs by Walter W. Thomas. Its interior was decorated by the sculptor Charles John Allen and the designer Henry Bloomfield Bare, with craftspeople from the School of Architecture and Applied Arts at University College, now the University of Liverpool. There is Jacobean-style plasterwork, repoussé copper panels on musical themes, mosaic floors, a horseshoe-shaped bar and the Grande Lounge, which rises one and a half storeys.
Historic England upgraded the building to Grade I in 2020, describing it as one of the finest public houses in England and the pinnacle of the gin-palace form. Even the gentlemen’s lavatories, with their original marble, are part of the listing.
The Vines, Lime Street
Seven years later Cain went back to the same architect. The Vines, known locally as the Big House, was rebuilt in 1907 to Thomas’s designs on a site where Albert B. Vines had opened a pub in 1867. Historic England describes it as neo-Baroque, with Dutch gables, a domed corner tower and a clock by E. J. Dent & Co. projecting over Lime Street. Inside are plasterwork by the Bromsgrove Guild and H. Gustave Hiller, carved mahogany and a former billiard room under a stained-glass dome.
The building is Grade II* listed. After a period of decline it was restored by the 1936 Pub Co. and reopened in March 2023; the restoration won the Historic England Conservation Award at CAMRA’s 2024 Pub Design Awards.
The Crown, Lime Street
Cain did not have the street to himself. Opposite Lime Street station, The Crown was built in 1905 for Peter Walker & Son of Warrington, in an Art Nouveau style that CAMRA reads as Walkers’ answer to Cain’s palaces. Lettering on the Skelhorne Street side still reads “Walkers Ales Warrington”. Inside, a winding staircase rises beneath a glazed dome to a former billiard room. The building has been Grade II listed since 1975.
The Lion Tavern, Moorfields
In the commercial district, the Lion Tavern shows what a turn-of-the-century refit looked like when nobody later took it out. The mid-19th-century building was refitted around 1905, and Historic England notes that it keeps its plan and fittings almost entirely intact: a corner bar, a news room, a drinking lobby lit by a glazed dome, etched glass and an Art Nouveau tiled dado. It is named after Lion, one of the early locomotives of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.
Peter Kavanagh’s, Egerton Street
Not every great interior came from a brewery. Peter Kavanagh’s, in the Georgian Quarter, was first licensed in 1854. Kavanagh became licensee in 1897, bought the pub outright in 1928 and the following year remodelled it himself, commissioning murals from the Scottish artist Eric Robinson, based on Dickens in the front room and Hogarth in the rear, and leaded glass with maritime scenes from William English. Historic England listed it at Grade II in 2020, calling it a unique legacy of one man’s vision.
Two older claims, told carefully
Ye Hole in Ye Wall, on Hackins Hey off Dale Street, describes itself as Liverpool’s oldest pub, trading since 1726. Its present interior is largely a 1930s refit, and its beer cellar is unusually on the first floor. Round the corner, Thomas Rigby’s occupies Rigby’s Buildings, whose façade carries the date 1726; Historic England records that the building was rebuilt around 1850, and the wine merchant Thomas Rigby gave it its stucco front in 1865.
A short walking order
Start at The Crown and The Vines on Lime Street, walk down to the Lion Tavern on Moorfields, cut across to Hackins Hey and Dale Street for Ye Hole in Ye Wall and Thomas Rigby’s, then take a bus or taxi up to Hope Street for the Philharmonic and on to Peter Kavanagh’s. Each venue’s page in the Register has opening hours and directions.
Sources: Historic England, National Heritage List for England (entries 1207638, 1084210, 1208085, 1363074, 1468405, 1206420); CAMRA National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors; CAMRA Pub Design Awards 2024.