London’s most equidistant pub · Equidistance
The Equidistance Pub Index
London’s most equidistant pub
London’s most equidistant pub is The Greene<br>Man at 383 Euston Road, on the corner of Great Portland Street.<br>Starting from where each of the 33 boroughs’ residents actually live,<br>and arriving by 7pm on an ordinary September Thursday by public transport,<br>journeys to it span 47 minutes between the nearest borough and the<br>furthest, and no borough needs more than 70. No pub in London does better<br>on both measures.
The bigger finding is what nobody manages: not one of<br>London’s 3,170 pubs is within an hour of all 33 boroughs.<br>Keep the worst-off borough to 60 minutes and the list of qualifying pubs<br>is empty. It stays empty at 65. The first pubs that everyone can reach<br>appear at 70 minutes, and there are exactly two of them, less than a<br>hundred metres apart by Great Portland Street station.
3,170 pubs tested
7,194 TfL journeys timed
0 pubs within an hour of every borough
47 min spread at the winner
12 min worst-case penalty at the geographic centre
Jump to:<br>the ten fairest pubs ·<br>the two centres of London ·<br>your borough ·<br>famous pubs ·<br>method
The ten fairest pubs in London
Ranked by keeping the worst-off borough’s journey as short as<br>possible, then by the spread between the luckiest borough and the<br>unluckiest. Every number is a TfL Journey Planner arrive-by-7pm journey<br>from a borough’s population-weighted centre.
‘Worst case’ is the longest journey any borough faces. ‘Spread’ is<br>the gap between the nearest borough’s journey and the furthest’s.
The Greene Man
383 Euston Road, Fitzrovia, NW1 3AU
A Greene King pub
worst case 70 min/average 49 min
47 min spread across the 33 boroughs
The Albany
240 Great Portland Street, W1W 5QU
worst case 70 min/average 49 min
48 min spread across the 33 boroughs
The Lucky Saint
58 Devonshire Street, W1W 5EA
worst case 71 min/average 50 min
48 min spread across the 33 boroughs
The Metropolitan Bar
7 Station Approach, Marylebone Road, NW1 5LD
Wetherspoon, above Baker Street station
worst case 71 min/average 49 min
54 min spread across the 33 boroughs
The George & Dragon
151 Cleveland Street, W1T 6QN
independent free house, brews its own
worst case 72 min/average 51 min
47 min spread across the 33 boroughs
Smuggler’s Tavern
28 Warren Street, W1T 5LT
worst case 72 min/average 49 min
48 min spread across the 33 boroughs
Square Tavern
26 Tolmers Square, Euston, NW1 2PE
Young’s
worst case 72 min/average 49 min
50 min spread across the 33 boroughs
Crown & Anchor
137 Drummond Street, NW1 2HL
worst case 72 min/average 49 min
50 min spread across the 33 boroughs
Stag’s Head
102 New Cavendish Street, W1W 6XW
worst case 73 min/average 52 min
48 min spread across the 33 boroughs
10
Queen’s Head & Artichoke
30-32 Albany Street, Regent’s Park, NW1 4EA
worst case 73 min/average 51 min
49 min spread across the 33 boroughs
The list is an unbroken corridor along the Euston Road, from Baker<br>Street in the west to Euston in the east: dense tube interchange to the<br>west, Elizabeth line access via Tottenham Court Road, and mainline stations<br>on the doorstep for the rail-dependent outer boroughs.
Fairness makes no judgement about the beer. The winner is a Greene<br>King pub, and number four is the Wetherspoon above Baker Street station.<br>Number three, the Lucky Saint, is the flagship pub of an alcohol-free<br>brewery; fairness makes no judgement about the strength, either. The<br>George & Dragon on Cleveland Street, an independent free house<br>and the West End’s only brewpub, sits at number five.
One pub is missing from the ten. On raw journey time the Huntley on<br>Gower Street comes ninth, but it is University College London’s students’<br>union bar: open in term time only, and shut on the modelled September<br>Thursday. It stays in the downloadable dataset, not on a list of places<br>anyone can actually meet.
No pub within an hour of everyone
Hillingdon is the binding constraint. From its population centre in<br>North Hillingdon, even the best-connected pubs in central London take 70<br>minutes by the time the walk, the wait and the interchange are counted. Ease that limit up five minutes at a time and the pubs are<br>slow to appear:
Worst-case cap (minutes)Pubs everyone can reach in time
500<br>550<br>600<br>650<br>702<br>7534<br>8099<br>85198<br>90209
One footnote for purists: The Railway in West Hampstead has the<br>single smallest spread of all, 46 minutes, but leaves the worst-off<br>borough 76 minutes out, so it falls at any cap below 80.
The centre of London is in the wrong place
In 2014 the geographic centre of Greater London, the point that<br>balances the city’s shape, was calculated<br>to sit beside Greet House on<br>Frazier Street, SE1; this study’s boundaries reproduce that point to<br>within 2.5 metres. The nearest pub, 86 metres away, is The<br>Duke of Sussex on Baylis Road. If geography decided fairness, that would<br>be London’s natural meeting place. The network...