The BlueBell

York's smallest pub holds one of Britain's most complete Edwardian interiors — refitted in 1903 and essentially untouched since, three stars on CAMRA's national inventory, Grade II* for the rooms alone — and a licensee lineage to match: George Robinson, a founding director of York City FC, took it in 1903, his wife and then daughter carried it to the 1990s, and John Pybus has held it since 2015 with his wife Katie, collecting the branch's Pub of the Year title in 2025 against four hundred and fifty rivals. The freehold sits with a pub company — the city listed the pub an Asset of Community Value in 2017 precisely to guard the interior — but the tenancy is where the pub lives, and it lives well: sixty-five people maximum, two tiny rooms, cask only, conversation compulsory.