London's oldest restaurant Rules is donated to the National Trust after 228 years in Covent Garden

Rules, the Covent Garden oyster house established in 1798, has passed into the hands of the National Trust after owner J-P Mayhew, who had held the building for 40 years, chose to gift it to the conservation charity. The transfer aims to permanently safeguard the restaurant's celebrated red plush interior, its paintings and stained glass, and what Mayhew describes as its 'invisible atmosphere'.

Rules has outlasted more than 40 prime ministers, came through the Blitz unscathed, and counted King Edward VII, Charles Dickens, Charlie Chaplin and Madonna among its guests.

Mayhew said the National Trust 'will protect this place in a way that no-one else could', preserving both its physical fabric and two centuries of accumulated history.

In 1971, poet laureate John Betjeman successfully fought a GLC plan that would have demolished the site to make the Strand a dual carriageway.