The Princess Louise is a public house on High Holborn, London, famous for its remarkable interior, with wood panelling and a series of 'booths' around an island bar. It is a tied house, being owned by the Samuel Smith Brewery of Tadcaster, Yorkshire. The building is protected by its Grade II listing and has what has been described as "a rich example of a Victorian public house interior", by William B Simpson and Sons; who contracted out the work. As it is considered so historically significant even the men's toilets, with their marble urinals, are listed. The pub, which is also listed on CAMRA's national inventory of historic pub interiors, was refurbished in 2007.
Being located near Bloomsbury, the British Museum and the University of London, it is patronised by professors and other educationalists.
In June 2009, the pub was joint winner of the best refurbishment class of the 2008 Pub Design Awards awarded annually by CAMRA. Author Peter Haydon included the Princess Louise in his book The Best Pubs in London and rated it No. 5 in the capital, saying it had "possibly the best preserved Victorian pub interior in London".
The Princess Louise is also notable for having been the venue for a number of influential folk clubs run by Ewan MacColl and others, which played an important part in the British folk revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Famous quotes containing the words princess and/or louise:
“You may be a princess or the richest woman in the world, but you cannot be more than a lady.”
—Jennie Jerome Churchill (1854–1921)
“I love meetings with suits. I live for meetings with suits. I love them because I know they had a really boring week and I walk in there with my orange velvet leggings and drop popcorn in my cleavage and then fish it out and eat it. I like that. I know I’m entertaining them and I know that they know. Obviously, the best meetings are with suits that are intelligent, because then things are operating on a whole other level.”
—Madonna [Madonna Louise Ciccione] (b. 1959)