This pub is not only a grade II listed building, it is also a One Star pub on the Campaign for Real Ale’s (CAMRA) National Inventory with an interior of special national historic interest, and the description is as follows: "The decorative gable at the top of the building dates this pub to 1898, but inside the star of the show is the small room at the back with three even smaller snugs leading from it.

You can't miss this pub's gorgeous Art Nouveau ceramic frontage and entrance. 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, were designed by W J Neatby and manufactured by Doulton and Co of Lambeth. Neatby is most famous for the sumptuous tilework at Harrods' food hall.

Inside, there is a long servery on the left with a pewter-topped counter, with what looks like an original bar-back stretching along most of the wall behind the servery, with carved wooden pillars and bevelled mirrors. The dumb waiter past the bar-back looks like a modern addition. There's a tiled dado with simple vertical wood panelling beneath it. At the back behind the main room is a small panelled room (the 'Fox's Den') with three tiny intimate snugs at the back of it; but much of the woodwork here is thought to be relatively modern and may date from a 1993 refit."

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 WhatPub link is here: WhatPub/Fox & Anchor

The Pub Heritage Group link is here: PHG/Fox & Anchor

The Fox & Anchor featured on the Evening Crawl of EC1 and EC2 on 5 December 2001, and the Cloth, Meat, Diamonds and Leather: Evening Crawl of Smithfield and Clerkenwell on 13 April 2011.