Old Fountain
The Durrants put a fifty-litre Braumeister in their own cellar in 2017 and brewed on it until November 2019, and the kit is still down there.
Why go
Because the people who own it have owned it since 1964. The Old Fountain was a Whitbread house when the Durrant family took it on, went free of tie in 2002, and Jim Durrant has run the place since his father passed away in 1971
(Pellicle). Around it, Old Street turned into the Silicon Roundabout; a run of Victorian frontage on City Road is all that survived.
The beer is the reason to stay. CAMRA's branch surveyors counted four changing cask beers and zero regulars in January 2026, which means every line on the board turns over, and the ones they keep finding come from Five Points in Hackney, Iron Pier in Gravesend and Oakham in Peterborough (CAMRA). Keg runs alongside, and the bottle list is chalked up next to the bar. Upstairs there is a heated roof garden with two big parasols; downstairs there is a dartboard. The corner kitchen is now Laughing Yak, cooking Nepalese food with a turn through some pub classics.
Order this / avoid
- Order: whatever is on cask, since none of it is permanent, then something off the blackboard bottle list.
- Avoid: house beer. The brewhouse stopped in 2019 and the own-badged lagers are made elsewhere. Bring a card, not cash.
What locals & experts say
- Jonny Garrett, Beer Writer of the Year 2019 and 2022, in Pellicle:
Today it's the best pub in its postcode, with eight perfectly kept cask beers, 12 keg lines, and a fridge filled with curiosities.
1 That was April 2020, and the count is smaller now, which is worth knowing before you go looking for eight. - Des de Moor, whose London brewery register carries a start and stop date for every brewer in the city, on the kit:
In mid-2017, a small in-house brewery was added: a 50 l Braumeister kit in the cellar, operated by staff member Geoff Saulini.
2 He also records what the pub would not put on a chalkboard: brewing was suspended in November 2019, andown-badged lagers have since been sold in the pub but these are brewed elsewhere.
- No chef has named it, across all 622 rows of the London industry-recommendation record.
Good to know
- Sites: one. There is no other Old Fountain, and the freehold is held by the family's own company.
- Timing: Monday 3 to 11pm, Tuesday to Saturday noon to 11pm, Sunday noon to 8pm.
- Booking: walk in for the bar; the site takes table bookings.
- Payment: card only, no cash.
- Beer festivals are run here and announced on the pub's own site.
- Operator: single-site family freehold, sixty-two years in. That is the far end of the scale from a group rolling out a format, and it is why the buying looks the way it does.
- Hygiene: FSA rating 5, Islington, inspected 6 February 2024. Components 5, 5 and 5, where higher is worse. Clean, and the inspection is 30 months old.5
Verdict
should-visit — One family has run this pub since 1964, bought it out of the Whitbread tie in 2002, and then put a fifty-litre Braumeister in the cellar and brewed with it for three years. That is money spent on beer by people who did not have to, and it is the reason to walk up Baldwin Street. The brewing stopped in November 2019 and the kit is still down there, which Des de Moor's register records alongside the honest footnote that the own-badged lagers are now brewed elsewhere. On the board, CAMRA's branch surveyors counted four changing cask beers and zero regulars in January 2026: everything turns over, and the buying reaches Five Points in Hackney, Iron Pier in Gravesend and Oakham in Peterborough. Jonny Garrett, twice Beer Writer of the Year, wrote it up in Pellicle as 'the best pub in its postcode' with eight cask lines and twelve keg. That was 2020 and the board is smaller now, which is why this sits one rung below the top. There is a heated roof terrace, a dartboard downstairs, and a Nepalese kitchen called Laughing Yak in the corner.