Hoop and Grapes

Listed Grade II*, a grade above everything else in this collection except the George, and listed for the building rather than for the pub. Historic England puts it in the late seventeenth century and describes it as "a type of building once common in London but now very rare" — a timber-framed house of a kind that the Great Fire, the Blitz and a century of office development between them came close to erasing completely.

You can see why it earned the grade before you reach the door. The frontage leans, the doorways and floors are out of true, and the whole thing is narrow and tall in a way that nothing built later in London is. It stands on Aldgate High Street with glass towers on every side, so the contrast is not subtle.

The pub's own story is that the house escaped the Great Fire, whose eastern edge stopped close to Aldgate. Historic England's dating would place it just after instead. The two have never been reconciled, and by the standards of this collection that counts as well behaved.