The Barony Bar.

The Barony Bar

Four cask lines and no permanent beer on any of them, poured under a seven-bay oak gantry from 1899.1

Why go

John M Forrester drew the decorative scheme in 1898-9 for the trustees of a dead wine and spirit merchant, and CAMRA grades what he left Three star, its top grade for a pub interior, inside a category B listed building.1 The pub occupies the ground floor of a Broughton Street tenement and wraps around a florist's shop on the corner behind a teak frontage. CAMRA's own record gives two different build dates for that tenement, 1804 in its summary and circa 1818 in its long description, so take the building as early nineteenth century and leave it there.

Inside, the tiled dado holds eleven small painted panels of Scottish rural scenes, nine of them lochs. They sit low, benches covered several of them for years, and swapping some benches for chairs has put most of them back on view.1 Above the tiling on the left wall hang two enormous mirrors advertising McLaughlan Bros, and around the corner in the far arm of the L is a William Younger's India Pale Ale mirror. The oak counter and the ceiling-height seven-bay gantry are both 1899 work, and two Victorian tiled fireplaces with mirrored overmantels survive on the rear wall. On the front right of the building, the wrought iron lifting gear that used to swing beer barrels down is still bolted on.

The beer is four changing casks and nothing fixed.1

Order this / avoid

• Order: whatever is on, because there is no house beer to compare it to. Four lines change and none is permanent, so the board on the day is the whole list.1
• Order: it in the front bay window if the seat is free. The old fixed seating there keeps its leather cushioning, bench ends and a large oval table.1
• Avoid: expecting a review to back any of this up. CAMRA is the only organisation that has written about this pub in any source approved here.

What locals & experts say

• CAMRA's National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors grades the room Three star - A pub interior of outstanding national historic importance and describes it as A relatively small L-shaped, single-bar pub with a luscious interior, courtesy of an 1899 decorative scheme by John Forrester.1 On the tiled panels the same record is precise and slightly exasperated: sadly, mostly hidden by seating – why were they placed so low? – this must always have been a problem.
• CAMRA's Edinburgh & South East Scotland branch adds what the room is like to sit in, naming the street frontage glasswork and woodwork, the detailed cornices, the wooden floor and the whisky mirrors, plus regular quizzes and live music.2
• No bylined critic has written about this pub in any source this project accepts. Time Out's twenty-four best Edinburgh pubs of 9 February 2024 and The Skinny's twenty-pub Edinburgh guide in its 2026 edition were both read in full on 11 August 2026, and neither includes it. For a Three star interior on a busy street, that silence is worth stating.

Good to know

• Hours: noon to 11pm, seven days.2
• Booking: nothing published. Walk in.
• Getting there: Broughton Street runs downhill from the top of Leith Walk, and the pub sits on the corner about two thirds of the way along.
• Events: quizzes and live music sessions run regularly, with no schedule published anywhere approved.2
• Food and price: nobody publishes either. Both are unknown here.
• Hygiene: the Food Hygiene Information Scheme result for 81-85 Broughton Street is a Pass inspected 13 August 2024, with nothing pending. That is just under two years old.3

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: Not one of my saves. The case for it rests entirely on CAMRA's grading of the interior and on its record of a bar with four rotating casks and no permanent beer.

Verdict

could-visit — Four cask lines and no permanent beer on any of them is the buying position here, so the bar has nothing to fall back on and every pint is somebody's current decision. The room they pour it in is an 1898-9 Classical scheme by John M Forrester, commissioned by the trustees of a dead wine and spirit merchant, and CAMRA grades the interior Three star, its top grade, inside a category B listed building. The details that survive are specific: eleven small tiled paintings of Scottish rural scenes set low in the dado, nine of them showing lochs, a seven-bay oak gantry and 1899 counter, two Victorian tiled fireplaces with mirrored overmantels, a pair of McLaughlan Bros whisky mirrors, and the wrought iron barrel-lifting gear still bolted to the front of the building. The pub wraps around a florist's shop on the corner. What holds it here is that CAMRA is the only source: no critic has written a line about this bar, it appears in neither of the city's two standing pub guides, and the pub publishes no site that could be confirmed. The room is documented and the business is not.