London's oldest restaurant Rules given to National Trust in £11m donation

A gift to secure the building

The building at 34-35 Maiden Lane in Covent Garden, which houses Rules, has been donated to the National Trust by J-P Mayhew, who owned it for four decades. The trust describes the gift as an £11 million freehold donation that will protect a building where kings dined and writers and politicians plotted. The sum was also given as $14 million. Mayhew, who spoke on Wednesday, 14 October, explained his decision in these words:

There are few restaurants in the world that have endured the test of time like Rules.

Two centuries of service

Thomas Rule opened the premises in 1798 as an oyster bar, at a time when Europe was unsettled after the French Revolution. In 228 years the restaurant has had four owners, and its menu grew to include traditional British dishes such as steak and kidney pie and guinea fowl. The restaurant outlasted the British Empire and survived the Blitz in the early 1940s. In the early 1970s redevelopment plans would have led to its demolition, but a campaign led by the poet John Betjeman, who compared dining there to praying in a church, stopped them. The trust says the interior is very well preserved and that the building has seen more than two centuries of continuous restaurant operation.

Famous diners and literary links

Generations of celebrities and royals have eaten there, among them Charles Dickens, Charlie Chaplin, David Bowie, Madonna, Harrison Ford and Liza Minnelli. King Edward VII also met his mistresses at the restaurant. Writer Graham Greene marked birthdays there and wrote the restaurant into his novel The End of the Affair. Rooms are named after Greene and Betjeman.

What the gift includes

The donation covers the building together with visitor books, menus, caricatures, photographs, stained glass and signs. It also passes on the yearly rent from the restaurant's ongoing business, and that money will go into conservation work each year. Trading continues, so the building keeps its original use. The trust, which dates back to 1895, aims to save important sites while opening them to everyone. It calls Rules a "rare example of living heritage" because both the structure and the restaurant itself remain intact.

What the trust says

Hilary McGrady, director-general of the National Trust, offered this view of the restaurant:

This place is an outstanding piece of living history, with its corners where kings dined and writers and politicians plotted.

She also pointed to the open doors and the treacle sponge still on the menu. McGrady then praised Mayhew's generosity:

Mr Mayhew's extraordinary generosity, and the care he has poured into Rules over many decades, mean this beloved place has a future measured not in years but generations.

The restaurant remains open to diners while the trust takes over ownership of the building.