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London’s oldest restaurant given to National Trust
Howard Lake | 3 November 2026 | News
The owner of the Covent Garden building that houses Rules, open since 1798, has donated the freehold to the National Trust. It is the first historic restaurant the charity has taken on.
J-P Mayhew, who has owned 34-35 Maiden Lane for 40 years, has donated the building and its historic collection to the National Trust. Media reports value the gift at more than £11 million, although the Trust’s announcement gives no figure. The collection includes visitor books, menus, caricatures, photographs, stained glass and signs.
Two centuries, three families
Thomas Rule opened Rules in 1798, primarily as an oyster bar. His family kept it until the First World War, when descendant Charles Rule swapped businesses with Tom Bell, a Briton who ran a Paris restaurant called the Alhambra. Bell’s daughter sold it to John Mayhew in 1984. In 2022 Mayhew sold the business to Ricky McMenemy, who had worked there for 35 years, but kept the freehold. The building has therefore had just three owners until now, and the business four proprietors.
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Rules is known for game, much of it from an estate in Teesdale owned by Mayhew. The Trust says it has served more than 40 prime ministers, and diners have ranged from Dickens and Chaplin to Madonna and David Bowie. Graham Greene ate there every birthday and featured it in The End of the Affair. The Trust calls it the last survivor of a group of renowned London restaurants that included the Trocadero, the Mirabelle and Le Gavroche.
Why it was given?
Mayhew says the gift answers an appeal made in 1971. The Greater London Council planned to turn the Strand into a dual carriageway, threatening Maiden Lane, and John Betjeman spoke in defence of the restaurant’s “invisible atmosphere”. “My gift to the National Trust is in answer to that appeal,” said Mayhew.
The Trust adds that many iconic central London buildings now face redevelopment pressure and economic challenges. The gift is inalienable, so the building cannot be sold or otherwise disposed of.
Will it still be a restaurant?
Yes. The venue will continue trading under McMenemy, who becomes a commercial tenant of the Trust. His annual rent, which has not been disclosed, will fund the Trust’s conservation work. One trade report expects no material difference to day-to-day running.
Director-general Hilary McGrady said the gift gives the building “a future measured not in years but generations”. McMenemy said the arrangement gives the independent business security and peace of mind, and that he looks forward to another two centuries in the building.
The Trust already cares for 39 working historic pubs, including the George Inn in Southwark and the Crown Bar in Belfast. Rules will be its first restaurant.
Not the Trust’s first big property gift
The Trust’s first land, Dinas Oleu near Barmouth, was donated by Fanny Talbot in 1895. Historic House Hotels later gifted three working hotels, Hartwell House, Bodysgallen Hall and Middlethorpe Hall, making them inalienable and sending all profits to the Trust.
In September the Trust announced it would take on 22 Parkside in Wimbledon, the modernist home of Richard and Su Rogers, which the family donated. In January it announced a £10 million unrestricted gift from Humphrey Battcock, the largest donation in its 131-year history.
Has a restaurant been donated before?
It seems that this type of gift is unique: no historic restaurant building has been donated to a heritage charity, in the UK or abroad.
The closest UK examples are comedian Russell Brand donating his Trew Era Cafe in Hackney to the Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners Trust in 2016, and Brighton restaurant Alfresco giving its entire contents to local charities when it closed in 2019.
For fundraisers, the gift shows that major gifts are not always cash. This one transfers an asset and an income stream, and it came from a donor who was clear about what he wanted protected.
- Charity to scoop €10 million (22 June 2005)
- Nominate a regional charity to win a new £250k house (13 July 2012)
- Irish businessman donates holiday home to charity (29 November 2016)
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.