The House ofTrembling Madness

Ian Loftus fell into selling beer in 2005 as a sideline to his existing Stonegate shop and ended up building York's essential drinking den: a first-floor medieval hall — the rear reputedly incorporating Norman fabric of about 1180, a claim the guide passes on at tourist strength — where a congregation of mounted taxidermy oversees one of the north's great beer lists, with the bottle shop below running to many hundreds of lines. A second Madness opened on Lendal in 2018 but was sold in 2024 to a small bar group; it is a separate business now, and this listing is the original only — still Loftus's, still upstairs, still mad. Arrive early; the hall seats a rumour.