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Think of the National Trust and you probably picture stately homes, windswept coastlines and a scone in the tearoom. Now you can add steak and kidney pudding to that list. That’s because the building at 34-35 Maiden Lane in Covent Garden and the home of 228-year-old restaurant Rules has been donated to the Trust.
Rules started life as an oyster bar opened by Thomas Rule in 1798, and over the next two centuries it became a favourite of writers, actors and politicians. Charles Dickens, Charlie Chaplin and Winston Churchill all dined there, and Graham Greene marked his birthday there every year and wrote it into his novel The End of the Affair. Its more recent guests include Harrison Ford, Madonna and David Bowie.
The gift comes from JP Mayhew, who has owned the building for 40 years, and the freehold is valued at around £11 million. Rules’ archive of treasures is included in the deal too, from old menus and visitor books to caricatures, photographs, stained glass and signs.
If Rules is your go-to for a special occasion dinner, don’t worry, because nothing is changing on the restaurant side. The business is still run by proprietor Ricky McMenemy, who has worked there for 35 years, and it will now rent the building from the Trust as a commercial tenant. That rent will go towards the charity’s conservation work.
The deal is a first for the Trust as well. It already looks after 39 historic pubs, including the George Inn in Southwark, but this is the first building in its care that houses a historic restaurant still open for business.
This isn’t the first time someone has stepped in to save Rules. In 1971, the Greater London Council’s plans to turn the Strand into a dual carriageway put the restaurant at risk, and poet John Betjeman spoke out in its defence, praising its red plush seats, its stained glass and its ‘invisible atmosphere’. One of the dining rooms is now named after him, and Mayhew said his gift was ‘in answer to that appeal’.
Hilary McGrady, director-general of the National Trust, told the BBC that Rules is ‘an outstanding piece of living history’ that has ‘defied the odds to be standing here today, doors still open and treacle sponge still on the menu’.
If you’ve never been, expect proudly old-school British cooking, with game from Rules’ own estate, classics like steak and kidney pudding and plenty of nursery puddings to finish. There’s also a gorgeous cocktail bar upstairs if you fancy a drink first.
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