Jay Rayner in London Published October 13 2026
The dining room of Rules, London’s oldest restaurant, famed for its robust British menu of game dishes, meaty pies and sustaining steamed puddings, has been given over to the National Trust. The building at 35 Maiden Lane, complete with an original interior heavy with mahogany, brass rail and Victorian art, has become the first restaurant premises to be bequeathed to the heritage and nature conservation charity.
The restaurant in London’s Covent Garden, which began life in 1798 as an oyster house, has defied the string of hospitality business closures in the capital in recent times and had just four owners in its 228-year history. The third of those, restaurateur John “JP” Mayhew, bought it in 1984 and sold the business in 2022 to his general manager Ricky Mc Menemy, who has continued to provide the same style of food and service for which Rules has become renowned. However, Mayhew kept possession of the freehold of the six-storey townhouse on Maiden Lane so that no new landlord could force the restaurant out.
It is that, along with the interior and possessions including menus, visitor books and caricatures of the great and the good who have dined inside the building, which has passed to the National Trust. The gift, worth more than £11mn, is also “inalienable”, meaning the National Trust cannot sell it on. Hilary Mc Grady, director-general of the National Trust, which owns several pubs and hotels, said Rules was “quintessentially British” and “an outstanding piece of living history, with its corners where kings dined and writers and politicians plotted”.
Source: Financial Times Companies · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing