The Globe

One of the oldest pubs in Leicester

The Globe is one of the oldest pubs in Leicester and may have been serving beer as early as 1720. Its ales were brewed using spring water drawn from a well beneath the building. The Globe may have got its name from the glass globe filled with water that framework knitters hung in windows to help spread the light they needed to work by.

Birthplace of one of the largest knitwear companies in Europe

The inn was popular with local stockingers (people who made stockings on a knitting frame). In 1815, seeing an opportunity, local businessman Nathaniel Corah would go there every Saturday to buy the stockingers’ goods. He would examine the goods, make bids for what he wanted and then sell them on at a profit in places like Birmingham. The business grew, eventually becoming the hugely successful Corah hosiery company, at one time the largest knitwear producer in Europe.

In the late 19th Century, The Globe was a stopping place for the 19 different carriers who ran regular services to Leicester from Leicestershire villages. Carriers drove horse-drawn vehicles that transported goods and passengers.

The interior in the 1960s. Leicestershire Record Office

A traditional old pub

The exterior is typically Georgian, very plain and brick built, and is similar to 18^th century houses in Friary Lane, New Street and St Martin’s East.

In the mid-19th Century, The Globe would have had a three room layout typical of so many old pubs, namely a bar, a tap or smoke room and a parlour. In the 1970s The Globe was described as having a public bar, a smoke room, and a snug. The public bar had facilities for playing darts and dominoes, simple bench seating, and was ‘pervaded by a heavy chalk-laden atmosphere’. A ‘snug’ allowed for more intimate social contact with high banked settles (benches) ranged around a fire place. The saloon bar provided a plusher setting for drinking and conversation.

The Globe has been refurbished several times since the 1970s but still retains some of its traditional features and continues the service it has provided for the last 300 years.

Find out how to visit.