Daniel Craig pub plans now reach The Horseshoe in Clerkenwell. The actor is taking over the 1748 pub with Nick Jones and Charlie Carroll, and the pitch is blunt: keep the ground floor trading as a boozer while changing the space above it.
Craig said the place should be “an outlet for people to come and talk about stuff.” He also said, “I used to love sitting in a pub on my own, pretending to read a book and watching people.” Those comments set the tone for a venue that is being sold as social space first, dining room second.
The Horseshoe in Clerkenwell
The Horseshoe has been around since 1748, which gives the takeover a different weight from a quick celebrity investment. Nick Jones founded Soho House in 1995 and stepped down as CEO in 2022; Charlie Carroll built Flat Iron and later opened The Devonshire, so the project joins hospitality operators with a long record of turning familiar formats into something more polished. Craig is not entering this alone, and that matters for a site with a history that stretches across generations of London drinkers.
Craig also said, “There were lock-ins and things, especially on New Year’s Eve,” and added, “People used to party quite hard.” That is the clearest clue to how the new team wants the room to feel: not a themed attraction, but a pub that still behaves like one. The Horseshoe is also set to serve Bad Belze beer, linking the pub back to the brand Craig launched with Justin O’Shea earlier this year.
Downstairs boozer, upstairs dining
The operating plan is split by floor. Downstairs will stay a classic pub setting with some snacks, while upstairs becomes a dining room and may also have its own terrace. That combination usually means a sharper spend profile without giving up the casual trade that keeps a pub alive day to day.
For locals, the practical change is simple: the room they know is being refurbished, but it is not being turned into a restaurant only. The tension in the plan is obvious and useful — the team is promising tradition at street level and a more formal offer upstairs, which is exactly how modern pub operators try to widen their audience without losing the regulars who come for the bar.
Craig’s pub world
Craig said he grew up in pubs because his parents ran one, as did his grandparents. That background explains why this move feels less like a vanity buy and more like a continuation of a habit he has talked about for years. He is entering a London pub scene that already includes Guy Ritchie at The Lore of The Land, James Blunt at The Fox & Pheasant, Sir Ian McKellen at The Grapes since 2011, and Jeremy Clarkson at The Farmer's Dog in Burford.
What happens next is the real test. The Horseshoe has a new ownership group, a clear split between pub and dining room, and no public reopening schedule attached here. Until the doors open again, the story is whether the old boozer survives the refurbishment as more than a slogan — and whether it still feels like the kind of place where Craig would sit alone and watch the room.
