Public House Group opens The Horses in Clerkenwell

The Horses has opened on Ray Street in Clerkenwell, the sixth London pub from Public House Group and its first in the City fringe rather than west London. The building has traded as a pub since 1695, first as The Coach and Horses; the group kept the red-brick Victorian shell and had its in-house design team, Public House Studio, rebuild the interior around it.

Founders Phil Winser, James Gummer and Olivier van Themsche opened their first site, The Pelican, in Notting Hill in 2022, followed by The Bull in Charlbury, The Hero in Maida Vale, The Fat Badger on Golborne Road and The Hart, which opened a year ago this September.

A menu grown at Bruern Farms

A 330-year-old pub proves easier to renovate than a farm supply chain.

The Horses runs a daily-changing menu built from produce grown at Bruern Farms, the group's own market garden in the Cotswolds, which already supplies vegetables to all five other sites under what the group calls its Growing Programme. The approach ties the kitchen's output to what the farm has ready that week rather than a fixed printed menu.

Winser oversaw the design in-house rather than hiring outside architects, continuing a pattern across the group's six openings: period buildings restored with candlelight, reclaimed fittings and a deliberately worn-in look rather than a polished refit.

Clerkenwell gets another kitchen pub

Clerkenwell's pub scene has filled up with kitchen-led openings in the past two years, and The Horses arrives alongside newer arrivals from other small groups rather than into empty ground. Public House Group's bet is that its farm supply chain, not the location, sets the new site apart from the area's other posh pubs and hotel dining rooms.

No prices have been published yet; the group has historically kept Sunday roasts and bar snacks at pub rates while pricing main courses closer to a neighbourhood restaurant. Public House Group has built its identity on regenerative farming rather than a signature dish, which makes The Horses as much a test of that supply chain at a sixth site as it is a new London opening.

The group says produce lines from Bruern Farms will keep expanding as more sites open, with The Horses acting as the first Clerkenwell outlet to draw directly on that harvest rather than on wholesale deliveries.