The home of London’s oldest restaurant has been given to the National Trust. The unusual arrangement should ensure that very little changes.

Rules has survived two world wars, ten monarchs and London’s periodic enthusiasm for demolishing its own history. Its latest change is rather more reassuring. The building on Maiden Lane where the restaurant has traded for 228 years has been given to the National Trust.

Thomas Rule opened it as an oyster house in 1798, and it soon became a fixture of theatrical and literary London. Dickens ate there, as did Charlie Chaplin, Ava Gardner and David Bowie. Graham Greene celebrated his birthday at Rules each year and wrote it into The End of the Affair. Edward VII reportedly used it to meet his mistress.

Much of that history is still on the walls, which carry so many drawings, oils and caricatures that the panelling is hard to find. The menu has shown little interest in changing either. Game from the restaurant’s own estate at Lartington, in the High Pennines, still shares the card with oysters, pies and steak and kidney pudding, from a kitchen whose interests have never been particularly fashionable.

John Mayhew, who acquired Rules in 1984, has donated the freehold, valued at more than £11 million, along with its archive of menus, photographs and visitor books. He had already sold the business in 2022 to Ricky McMenemy, who has worked there for more than 35 years. McMenemy will go on running it and will now pay his rent to a conservation charity.

The building has needed defending before. In 1971, when redevelopment threatened Maiden Lane, John Betjeman spoke for Rules at a planning meeting. What he wanted saved could not be itemised like the stained glass: “We can sense it and it will not photograph.” The plans did not go ahead, and Mayhew has cited the speech as the inspiration for his gift.

The National Trust already looks after 39 historic pubs. Rules is its first working restaurant, and it will stay one: a heritage property the Trust cannot rope off, where the visitors expect lunch.

For once, the most interesting development in London dining is that something is being left alone.