Although this is no longer one of London’s Real Heritage Pubs it is in CAMRA’s 2011 Good Beer Guide and is also worth a visit for its gorgeous Art Nouveau ceramic frontage and entrance. At the back are various intimate snugs but much of the woodwork is new and may date from a 1993 refit.

The pub is also a grade II listed building and the listing description is as follows: “Public house. Dated 1898 on gable. Designed by Latham Augustus Withall and built by W. H. Lascelles and Co.; the decorative panels on the inside external walls of the ground floor, and perhaps most or all of the decorative front, designed by W.J.Neatby and manufactured by Doulton and Co of Lambeth. Terracotta and faience, of buff and various other colours; roof obscured by parapet. Four storeys, three-window range. An excellent example of street architecture and decorative tilework under the influence of Art Nouveau. Ground-floor wooden pub front recessed between Jacobean-style pilasters supporting inswept fascia and cornice; the wooden front with a canted bay flanked by doors with original panelled dado, decorative aprons, egg-and-dart frieze and some engraved glass. Upper windows flat-arched with mullions and transoms and moulded architraves, each floor framed by pilasters and cornice of different design; central first-floor window slightly projecting behind a stilted round arch mounted on small female term figures, with exaggeratedly long voussoirs of white and green faience alternately; frieze over first floor with 'FOX & ANCHOR' in central panel, confronting peacocks in outer panels, and two griffins bracketed out over central bay; second floor has shallow canted bay to central window, panels over with female faces enmeshed in arabesques; cornice with elaborate profile in plan and finials over central bay; third floor has lintels with joggled joints. Shaped gable of eccentric, almost circular profile filled with ornament in coloured faience of a fox and anchor flanking a stylised tree. Stylised trees also in panels to inside walls in front of wooden frontage on ground floor which are signed by Neatby and Doultons. Terrazzo pavement with Art Nouveau ornament. The interior has a stretch of tilework to the dado on the east wall, and a bar back and bar front which may be original, but have been altered. (Historians' file, English Heritage London Division).”

The Fox & Anchor featured on the Evening Crawl of EC1 and EC2 in December 2001, and the Cloth, Meat, Diamonds and Leather: Evening Crawl of Smithfield and Clerkenwell in April 2011.