Whites Tavern, 2-6 Wine Cellar Entry, Belfast, County Antrim, BT1 1QN

White's Tavern is a three-storey rendered brick public house dating from around 1790, situated at 2–4 Winecellar Entry, Belfast, and facing into the courtyard of that entry. It is reached by passages from either Lombard Street or Rosemary Street, and is landlocked, being built against on three sides.

The building's style is urban vernacular. Its Bangor Blue slate roof runs with its ridge parallel to Lombard Street. The eaves are corbelled and fitted with ogee-profile guttering in cast iron. The front elevation is rendered and painted with a slight texture, with shallow window surrounds and projecting cills to most openings. The fenestration is fairly regular, arranged in six bays, with modern double-hung sash windows with horns, typically two-over-two panes. The ground floor is more irregular, with four windows grouped close together, one noticeably smaller window, and three doors. Ornamental iron grilles, also modern, are fixed to the windows at ground and first floor level. Quoinstones appear at each end of the terrace. Rainwater goods are cast iron.

White's Tavern claims to be Belfast's oldest tavern. The traditionally cited foundation date of 1630, associated with a Thomas Kane, is not supported by documentary evidence; indeed, the 1685 map of Belfast shows that Winecellar Entry did not yet exist, the surrounding area between High Street, Bridge Street and Waring Street being used as yard and garden space with no standalone buildings on the site. A second theory holds that an English family called Bateson established a wine and spirit store in the area in the late 17th century. The date of 1630 most likely refers not to a building but to the granting of a continuous tavern licence, which at the time was not tied to a specific premises but could move with the proprietor.

What is clear is that the current building does not date from the mid-17th century. The previous structure was demolished and rebuilt in the late 18th century by Valentine Jones, a wine merchant, who constructed what a contemporary source describes as "two good and substantial messuages or tenements of Brick and Lime, three stories high." The entry itself was originally known as Bigart's Alley, a six-foot-wide passage first shown on the 1715 map of Belfast. It was renamed Winecellar Entry by the early 19th century, reflecting the number of wine cellars established along it; by 1822 the entry contained only eight buildings.

In the early 19th century the wine and spirit store changed hands frequently. By 1803 it had come into the possession of James Napier and was later operated by William Park & Co. A John Kane was the sole wine merchant listed in Pigot's Street Directory of 1824. By the 1830s the stores and offices were occupied by John Murphy & Co., and the Townland Valuation at that time assessed the building at £48. By 1852 the property was in the hands of Hugh White and his partner James Neil, who traded as Neil and White, wholesale wine and spirit merchants. Griffith's Valuation in the early 1860s increased the rateable value of the stores and wine vaults to £85, recording that Neil and White leased the building from a Hill Hamilton. James Neil left the partnership between 1861 and 1868, after which Hugh White ran the business alone under the name Hugh White & Co., giving the building its current name. White died in 1882 but the licensed stores continued trading under his full name for approximately a century, until the 1960s.

Throughout the early 19th century the premises was not described as a public house but operated as a licensed wholesale store. Ironically, part of the building was used as a Temperance Hotel in the 1870s. By the Belfast Revaluation of 1900 the premises included a public house open six days a week but required to close early; the valuer noted that retail sales of drink amounted to only £520 in the previous year, while wholesale trade continued. Under that revaluation the property was valued at £185; this had fallen to £130 by the cancellation of the Annual Revisions in 1930, and remained at that figure under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland in 1935. No further valuation survey was undertaken for over two decades due to the Second World War; the Second Revaluation in 1956 increased the value of Hugh White & Co. Ltd. to £248.

The building was renamed White's Tavern in 1962, the same year it was renovated, and its assessed value rose sharply to £650. A major restoration and heavy redecoration followed in the 1980s, described at the time as designed to reflect the heritage of one of Belfast's oldest drinks establishments. The architectural historian C. E. B. Brett was critical of this work, writing in 1985 that until recently the building "combined the picturesque and the practical to perfection with its heavy timbered bays, barred windows and roof hoist," but had been "disastrously restored in 'Ye Olde style'," with a poker-work inn sign outside and the interior "replete with arty brass and electric bulbs in bogus lanterns."

The building stands within a conservation area. Winecellar Entry itself is picturesque, though Brett and others have noted that the immediate physical surroundings of the Tavern are less attractive than the building itself.