The Kenilworth.

The Kenilworth

One mahogany island bar under a double-height room, and CAMRA's surveyors are the reason the building is now listed category A.1

Why go

Thomas Purves Marwick fitted this room out in 1899 for Peter Fisher, whose family sold wine and spirits, inside a building that already dated to about 1780.1 It is one of four Edinburgh pubs built around an island bar, the Abbotsford up the hill being another. Blue and white Minton tiles run two thirds of the way up a double-height public bar, finished off with rows of plainer tiles under a patterned plasterwork ceiling. A Dryborough's mirror made by Forrest & Son of Glasgow, who supplied half the pub mirrors in the country, covers a good part of one wall.

Alloa Brewery paid for a serious restoration in 1966 with architects Covell Matthews. They moved the mahogany island bar back to where it started and reworked its carved front, brass match-strikers and all.1 The tiling they could not save they replaced in majolica, well enough that CAMRA has to publish a test for telling the two apart. The branch survey adds a further refurbishment in 2022 and a small rear lounge, the Scott Room, added in that 1966 campaign.2

The drinking side is a much shorter story. This is a Nicholson's house, so the permanent cask is Nicholson's Pale Ale brewed by St Austell, four more casks change beside it, and tasting paddles are available across the bar.2

Order this / avoid

• Order: a paddle. Four changing casks against one fixed house beer is exactly the shape a paddle solves, and the branch survey records that they serve them.2
• Avoid: taking the tiling on trust. CAMRA gives you the test: The original tiles have a smooth finish and much of the crazing (crack-like markings on the tiles due to ageing) is more like scratches; where the tiles have a relief/rough finish and the crazing forms a pattern the tiles are the restored/replacement ones.1

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 opens on the island: Carefully restored in 1966, this is one of four impressive Edinburgh pubs with island bars (cf the nearby Abbotsford).1
• The listing itself is CAMRA's doing. The same record ends flatly: Listing upgraded to A in 2008 as a result of survey work by CAMRA.1 Category A is the top of the Scottish scale and very few pubs hold it.
• No bylined critic has assessed this pub in any source this project accepts, and it appears in neither Time Out's twenty-four best Edinburgh pubs of 9 February 2024 nor The Skinny's twenty-pub Edinburgh guide in its 2026 edition. Both lists were read in full on 11 August 2026. That describes those two lists and not the pint.

Good to know

• Hours: Monday to Thursday noon to 11pm, Friday noon to midnight, Saturday 11am to 10pm, Sunday 11am to 11.30pm.2
• Booking: nothing published. Walk in. The Scott Room at the back is the quieter option if you want to eat.2
• Getting there: Rose Street runs behind Princes Street, and this end of it is a two-minute walk from Charlotte Square.
• Who runs it: the pub trades under the Nicholson's estate, which is why the permanent beer is a Nicholson's badge. Nothing on the food is published anywhere.
• Hygiene: the Food Hygiene Information Scheme result for 152-154 Rose Street is a Pass inspected 18 June 2024, with nothing pending. That is about 26 months old.3

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: Not one of my saves. The case for it rests on CAMRA's grading of the interior and on the category A listing that its surveyors won in 2008.

Verdict

could-visit — This is one of four Edinburgh pubs built around an island bar, and the island is the real thing: mahogany, carved, with brass match-strikers set under the rim, returned to its original position by Alloa Brewery's 1966 restoration. Thomas Purves Marwick fitted the room out in 1899 for a family of wine and spirit merchants, and the blue and white Minton tiling still runs two thirds of the way up a double-height bar. CAMRA grades the interior Three star and the building is listed category A, upgraded from B in 2008 because CAMRA's own surveyors made the case. Everything above is about the building. What the pub actually sells is much less documented: it trades as a Nicholson's house, its one permanent cask is a Nicholson's badge brewed by St Austell, four more change, and tasting paddles are available. Nobody with a byline has assessed a drink or a plate here, and it appears in neither of the city's two standing pub guides. It sits at could-visit because the room is worth twenty minutes of anybody's Rose Street and the drinking is a chain proposition until somebody proves otherwise.