
Landmark pub calls time after almost two centuries.
Swiss Cottage... it's the only Tube station to be named after two types of cheese. So goes the gag. But in reality, the Jubilee line station and the wider area take their name from a pub: Ye Olde Swiss Cottage*.
That pub is now closed, after almost 200 years trading from the site. Owners Sam Smiths — more noted for central London gems like the Cheshire Cheese and Princess Louise — served up the last pint on Saturday 1 February. What happens to the landmark pub now is an open question.
The distinctive building is indeed shaped like a Swiss chalet, and painted the colour of a geography teacher's trousers (or French mustard). Why it was built in this peculiar fashion is lost to history, though Swiss-style buildings were quite fashionable in the mid-19th century.

The Swiss Cottage first welcomed punters not long after the opening of a new turnpike, then called Finchley New Road, and now just Finchley Road. The earliest mention we can find comes from a report of an assault (£) in September 1837, close to the "Swiss Cottage, St John's Wood". It is then mentioned the following year under the ownership of retired pugilist Frank Redmond, who owned a pair of "remarkable bloodhounds". He seems to have turned the place into a tavern shortly afterwards.
Redmond became famous in his own right as a font of sporting knowledge. As Illustrated London Life put it in 1843:
"Well versed in all matters of sporting is Frank Redmond, and behind a yard of clay, and over a glass of the best Cognac the proprietor of this celebrated hostelrie will discuss with you the merits of a Derby nag, the pluck, game, bravery, and stamina of the aspirant for fistic fame."
The Swiss Cottage could, then, claim to be London's first sports bar.
A delightful illustration of the building survives from 1843. It already looks old and ramshackle, so presumably the main part of the building had stood here some time before Redmond rebranded it as "Swiss".

(A few sources hint that there may have been an even earlier Helvetian structure in these parts dating back to the reign of Charles II. This may be confusion with Lausanne Cottage located further west in Kilburn.)
In Redmond's time and after, the Swiss Cottage (sometimes Swiss Tavern) thrived in its prominent position close to the tollgate on one of the main roads out of London. It quickly became a well-known landmark. That status was cemented in the 1850s when it became a terminus for omnibuses. Even more so in 1868, when an extension to the Metropolitan Railway terminated here, at a station called Swiss Cottage. It's been on transport maps ever since, although the modern station, dating from 1939, is on an adjacent site.
The pub has been rebuilt a couple of times, always keeping its Swiss looks. Perhaps the most dramatic change came in the mid-1960s when Finchley Road was significantly widened. One of its effects was to place the pub on a large traffic island. From that point on, a pint in the Swiss Cottage beer garden was less like sitting on the shores of Lake Geneva and more like the Zurich western bypass.
Still, the pub carried on as a noted landmark, even as its popularity had waned in recent years. It still retained its old-school interior and even a pub carpet. Not many of those are left any more.
Its closure is a sad moment in London pub history (and local drinkers, who find themselves in something of a beer wilderness). The new freeholder and their intentions are unknown (we checked the planning sites and no development has been submitted). We can only hope that this remarkable and historic pub rises once again under new ownership.
*One of six Tube stations that get their names from a pub.