When we think of London culture, it is perhaps the theatres, museums, galleries or historic buildings that dominate the mental tableau. Yet the London pub deserves pre-eminence in the cultural constellation. Not only do pubs provide top-notch food and drink, but many double up as theatres, museums, galleries and historic buildings in their own right. A mid-afternoon tipple is best if you simply want to enjoy your surroundings, but 6pm is when the pub comes to life.
London is particularly rich in pubs we might describe as ‘Ye Olde’. These are establishments that have history, or like to think that they do. Such places typically contain a warren of rooms or partitioned areas, making each visit a different experience. Unsurprisingly, these pubs tend to cluster in the older parts of town, especially Holborn and the City.
A Locals pub might ultimately be defined as a pub with lots of local people in it, rather than one with a transient passing trade. The term implies so much more, though. A dubious smelling carpet, a rarely troubled dartboard with faded chalk scoring, an easy conversation with a stranger, a dearth of ales in favour of mega-brewery lagers: all are hallmarks of a stereotypical ‘Locals’ pub. You’ll find them in Zones 2 outwards, with the occasional interloper in Zone 1.
The Gastropub is any pub that serves food as a main attraction – in some cases, the main attraction. It is perfectly reasonable to content yourself with nothing more than a drink – preferably wine – but you might feel a little awkward about it. Sometimes you get table service, sometimes you must venture to the bar, and always you will assume wrongly and make a fist of ordering.
The Bar-pub styles itself like a pub, often with a good old authentic name like ‘The Holborn Whippet’ or ‘Mother Kelly’s’. Yet inside, the walls are stark, the bar area minimalist. This ‘We’re a pub but we don’t look like a pub’ idea is on the rise, especially at venues that specialise in craft ales. It’s not uncommon for the taps or pumps to lack any branding, and the nonplussed drinker must consult a menu board to choose their tipple.
The Events pub London’s pubs have never been solely about drinking. They’ve long served as places for impromptu business meetings, political gatherings and musical entertainment. In Georgian times, the local pub was often used for coroner’s enquiries or even criminal trials. The tradition carries on today with many drinking dens staging live music, variety evenings or intellectual discussions. There’s also a thriving community of meet-up groups, who gather in pubs to discuss everything from French literature to life on other planets. All classes of pub dabble in this area, but some make a speciality of hiring out function rooms to bring like-minded people, often strangers, together.
Makeover pubs are another growing phenomenon. Here, some grand but defunct building is recalled to life as a place to enjoy a drink. Former theatres, banking halls, working men’s clubs, department stores, even a tram shed, are stripped, refitted and opened to drinkers. The Wetherspoon chain was a pioneer of this type, with dozens of examples across London. More recently, the Antic group has persuaded us that, yes, we really do want to drink in an old department store named after a local brothel keeper. Mismatched furniture is a must, for some reason.
The Also-rans are the perfectly decent boozers that do everything well but nothing exceptionally well. Such pubs are legion and represent the typical London boozer. Anywhere with brass fittings, plastic menu cards, and those tedious white salt-shakers on every table will probably fit this category. These are the haunts of old-guard brewers like Fullers, Youngs and Greene King (though all have some excellent venues in other categories). Again, you’ll probably have a great time in these places, but the word ‘bedazzled’ will not suggest itself.
Estimates vary depending on definitions, but it seems there are around 7,000 pubs in London. I reckon I’ve visited around 1,000, and could fill a book as long as this one with recommendations. What follows, though, is a distillation of absolute, must-visit pubs. I’ve started with some well-known central venues, for majority convenience, but I’ve also included a fair few commendable places a little further out.
The Blackfriar
174 Queen Victoria Street, EC4V 4EG (Blackfriars)
Have you ever seen anything like it? A wedge of a pub decorated with grinning monks and Art Nouveau flourishes. Head inside and the gaudy decorations are marinaded into the walls, a friar tucked into every corner. The vaulted dining area is the most overblown refectory this side of the V&A. Still, it’s impossible not to love The Blackfriar, especially when you discover the adventurous ale selection. This is the unofficial waiting room for Blackfriars train station, and you’ll often overhear punters decrying the ‘Bloody Thameslink’.
22 High Holborn, WC1V 6BN (Blackfriars)
I have to declare a bias. As an alumnus of York I naturally gravitated to this pub, despite its inept spelling, on my first arrival. I’ve never had a bad night here, though. The main bar is unique – a long, tall hall with huge vats pendant from the walls. It all looks like a ship’s engine room, complete with snugs that resemble mariners’ bunks, to one side. A secondary room is kitted out like a Georgian drawing room, while the ancient stone basement is quite a find. I swear there’s a hidden beer garden here too, but it never seems to be open, and no one believes me.
Princess Louise
208 High Holborn, WC1V 7EP (Holborn)
This is the picture-book example of a Victorian gin palace. You’ll adore the partitioned drinking spaces, the intricately etched glass and mirrored bar area, even if much of it is modern retro-artifice. The Princess’s charms can be her undoing, at least for those seeking a quiet drink. The handsome ground-floor bar is perpetually thronged, even mid-afternoon. Head upstairs for a lesser but quieter space. Head downstairs for some Grade II listed urinals – worth a sneak peek even if you have no business being in the gents’ toilet. If you’re prepared to venture further, Maida Vale’s Prince Alfred (5a Formosa Street, W9 1EE) offers something very similar and perhaps even more opulent.
Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese
145 Fleet Street, EC4A 2BU (Chancery Lane)
The sine qua non of any historic pub tour, the Cheese somehow gets to be both a tourist bar AND an essential experience for proper Londoners. I’ve visited some three dozen times over the years, and I swear I’ll find a new room every time. If Harry Potter ever grew out of that wretched butterbeer and craved an enchanted boozer in which to get lashed, he would choose this place. The Sam Smith’s beer is not to everyone’s taste, but it’s cheap and its really the atmosphere you’re here for.
The Well and Bucket
143 Bethnal Green Road, E2 7DG (Shoreditch High Street)
A Victorian original, which hung up its tankards a few decades ago to become a clothing outlet, the Well and Bucket recently came out of retirement and is serving ales again. And how. The busy bar dispenses all manner of lesser-spotted brews, be it draught, keg or bottle. The food, too, is superb, but never muscles out the drinking ethos of the place. A scrappy little beer garden, some truly memorable artwork and a cosy basement cocktail bar suggest a confused establishment, but its one you can easily fall for. The small Barworks chain runs other pubs on the City fringes, such as the recenty opended Singer Tavern (1 City Road, EC2A 1AN) and the Electricity Showrooms (39a Hoxton Square, N1 6NN). All are worth seeking out.
The Blind Beggar
337 Whitechapel Road, E1 1BU (Whitechapel)
Yeah, it’s the place where one of the Krays murdered a rival. That’s all very impressive/depressing, but also very well known. Less well known is that the Beggar is a surprisingly characterful pub with a real mix of locals, morbid tourists and sports fans. Gangland lore aside, this place gets a thumbs up for (a) having an excellent pool table, and (b) the pool of another kind in the beer garden, which supports a school of chunky koi carp. Order a plate of fish and chips, observe the koi, and contemplate your mortality in this pub of death. Oh, and the almost neighbouring White Hart is also worth a look.
The George Inn
75–77 Borough High Street, SE1 1NH (London Bridge)
This is another very well known pub, but one impossible to leave out of a listing such as this. The George revels in its status as ‘London’s only remaining coaching inn’; that is, a place where stagecoaches would rest overnight before the final squeeze across the medieval London Bridge. So historic is this place that it has its own biography (a witty book called Shakespeare’s Local by Pete Brown), and the landlord is the National Trust. Don’t expect good phone reception: the pub is supposedly haunted by the landlady who presided over The George at the time when the railways arrived, taking all her coaching custom. Her spectre hates any new technology, and regularly screws over anything that looks like progress.
Catford Constitutional Club
Catford Broadway, SE6 4SP (Catford Bridge)
Not so much ‘This shouldn’t work, but it does’ as ‘This shouldn’t work, but it damn well makes me want to get down on my knees and whoop with delight’. The triple-C is bloody scary from the outside: a tumbledown building in an unfashionable area that looks like the sort of place in which the music will cut out the second you walk through the door – assuming the electricity’s actually working and the door isn’t barred. But once inside, it’s a superb example of the Antic chain’s ability to take an old building and renew it with wonder. Interesting beers, questionable non-decor and a damn fine kitchen all make this so much more memorable (in a good way) than the typical pub. There are many similar examples from this chain across town that I might equally have listed (Balham Bowls Club, 7–9 Ramsden Road, SW12 8QX and The Tooting Tram and Social, 46–48 Mitcham Road, SW17 9NA, for example, self-explain their origins). Make a list and go tick them all off.
The Ship
41 Jews Row, SW18 1TB (Wandsworth Town)
Talk about an odd location. The Ship nestles on the semi-industrial edge of Wandsworth, directly above a sewage outfall pipe. That this was voted one of the best gastropubs in the country is therefore especially wonderful. And yet the pub has the good grace to wear its culinary achievements with little ostentation. The main dining area is hidden well away from the various spaces where drinkers can get on with the more important business of sipping beer. There’s a definite maritime flavour about the older, original bar, recapitulated in the beer garden where you’ll find life buoys, ships’ wheels and other macronauticalia.
The Dove
19 Upper Mall, W6 9TA (Hammersmith)
A pleasant, peaceful retreat in the riverine reaches of Hammersmith. The Dove reckons to have one of the smallest bars in the Kingdom, which I would dispute if only I could get in. There are larger rooms to the back, though, and a particularly fine riverside terrace arranged on two layers. Cosy in the winter, attractive in the summer, this is one of London’s finest all-rounders.
Dragonfly Brewery
183 High Street, W3 9DJ (Acton Town)
Acton finally becomes a destination with this superb pub of two halves. In the front, you get the dark wood atmosphere of the ancient George and Dragon pub. Round the back, you’ll find the towering copper fermenters of the new brewery. They brew some mighty good stuff, and there are few finer interiors in which to enjoy a smart swig.
The Holly Bush
22 Holly Mount, NW3 6SG (Hampstead)
Any guide that covers Hampstead will tell you to go to the Spaniard’s Inn for a drink. Well, it’s certainly a gem, but so far from any tube station. Plus, I have it on good authority that the Spaniard’s numerous ghost stories were entirely made up in the 1980s by a previous landlord. So, instead, head to Holly Mount, where this attractive hilltop pub will charm your socks off (if the serious gradients don’t wear them out first). I once spied Noel Gallagher in here, which might be a ringing endorsement or a clinching off-putter, depending on your proclivities.
The Pineapple
51 Leverton Street, NW5 2NX (Kentish Town)
Kentish Town has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to good pubs. Craft-aleheads will already know the Southampton Arms (139 Highgate Road, NW5 1LE). Gastro-seekers can admire the Bull & Last (168 Highgate Road, NW5 1QS). There are at least six other nearby boozers that I’d say are worth an hour of anyone’s time. The Pineapple, though, is the best all-rounder. The backstreet boozer has a strong local following, favouring a younger crowd but welcoming to all. Its beer range, while not quite as staggering as the Southampton, is still superb and regularly supplemented by mini-festivals in the small back garden. If only I lived nearby, 80 per cent of this book would have been written in The Pineapple. It’s that good.
AT THIS HOUR:
Gresham College is one of the oldest educational institutions in London, dating back to Tudor times. It puts on free public lectures two or three times a week on every subject from stellar astronomy to political reform to peculiar mathematics. The talks take place either at lunchtime or 6pm, often at the college’s historic Barnard’s Inn Hall in Holborn (EC1N 2HH).