Bennets Bar, Edinburgh

Edinburgh's second finest interior after the Café Royal and little changed since 1906. It is the last pub in the city with an original gantry featuring four spirit casks, and has an extraordinary tiled and mirrored interior, as well as a rare jug bar. It also stocks 120 single malt whiskies. The ornate gantry has niches, pilasters and scallop shell pediments. The original bar counter retains a former spittoon trough made of marble, which runs all along the front, and the bar top has two working brass water taps. Designed in 1891 by George Lyle, it has a fine ceiling with very decorative cornices and it was refitted in 1906. The magnificent interior features a tiled and extraordinary four-bay mirrored arcading all the way down the right-hand side with hand-painted pictorial tiles with allegorical figures by William B. Simpson & Sons of London. Below the arcading are red leather seating areas and tables inlaid with maps, some of the city and some of Scotland.

On the left by the entrance is the intact tiny jug and bottle dept. complete with hatch, one of the few left in the city. In 2002 S&N removed the 'Office' created by a carved wood screen perched on top of the bar counter on the right. There are superb stained glass windows as well as door panels advertising 'Jeffrey’s Lager & W & J Jenkinson's Bottled Beers & Aerated Waters, Leith'. There are a number of coloured and gilded engraved brewery advertising mirrors from Bernard's, Usher's, Campbell's, Taylor Macleod & Co and Bell's Perth Whisky. Other changes have been the removal of a small snug at the rear; while a sitting room at the rear is now an office. At the rear right is the Green Room, which was added in 1906. Accessed from Valleyfield Street, it has an ornate bar counter and gantry, but both are modern.