The office’s programme for 2026–27 began where it should: with all four Ale-Conners round a table at Guildhall.
2026–27 is shaping up to be a year with real ambition behind it: supporting the City’s pubs and bars, putting the office’s seven-century history to modern use, and finding new ways to champion customer safety and good hospitality across the Square Mile. More on all of that as it takes shape.
As part of laying the groundwork, Monday saw what’s believed to be the first time in many years that all four City of London Ale-Conners have sat down together with City Corporation officers at Guildhall, comparing notes and testing ideas. A useful hour, and a good sign of things to come.
Afterwards I walked down to the Lamb Tavern in Leadenhall Market, one of the City’s best-kept historic pubs, where the team invited me behind the bar to pull a pint: the modern end of what the office was once sworn to check. The ale was in very good condition.
Even seven hundred years of tradition has to make its peace with modern conveniences, and the Assize of Bread and Ale had rather less to say about contactless payment than one might hope. The bright pink card reader propped beside the pumps suggests the Lamb has moved with the times somewhat more readily than its Ale-Conner.
The Lamb is marked on the pub map, along with some 180 other reasons to linger in the Square Mile.