February: Facebook's Best Boozer, Downsizing in Walthamstow & Covent Garden's Indie Delights
A monthly newsletter about London beer and pubs written by Will Hawkes
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How London Pubs conquered Facebook
MARK is drinking Thatchers Cider at a pub in Ruislip. Thomas is lamenting the “long gone” Fountain in Lower Clapton Road. Jon has just been to Kensington’s Churchill Arms (“Nice collection of chamber pots”). An anonymous tied-pub landlord is interested to know what people consider an acceptable price for beer. Tom seeks advice on which two or three pubs to visit in Camden on a flying visit to town. Ian is heading to Twickenham for the rugby, and needs a pub that won’t be too mobbed. Nicky just wants to say what a great group this is.
It’s a busy morning on London Pubs, but then it is a very busy Facebook group. With 139,000 members at the time of writing (it’ll be more by the time you read this), this is a vibrant community of pub-goers, taking in Londoners, ex-Londoners, visitors from around the UK and tourists from all over, particularly the USA, Australia and Scandinavia. Most people here are men - about 70 percent - but, like the best pubs, it’s not overwhelmingly male.
Founded about two-and-a-half years’ ago in the aftermath of Covid-19, its success is testament to the cultural cachet of London pubs. We’re often told that pubs rank somewhere in the top five when it comes to reasons why people visit Britain, but this is tangible, vivid evidence. To peruse London Pubs is to understand the extent to which they are a key part of London, a fundamental element of the city’s culture and of its allure.
Someone who understands this better than most is Mark Dutton, the group’s founder, a 50-year-old Merseysider who lives on a boat chugging up and down the Grand Union Canal. (When we speak he’s in Rickmansworth, just outside the capital, but he’d recently been in Paddington, the canal’s London terminus.)
He was inspired by a pal who’d founded a similar group for Lincoln, he says. Unlike the Lincoln group, where pub owners post about what’s going on at their venues, the London group is overwhelmingly customer-driven, which is what gives it such energy. People like pubs and they love to share that enjoyment. “It’s about the punters,” Mark says. “That was very important to me, right from the start.”
The group grew quickly, riding a post-lockdown wave of affection for pubs. It has accelerated since: it reached 100,000 members just before Christmas, Mark says.
It’s easy to understand why it’s popular. There are pictures of beautiful pubs, plenty of heated debate (of which, more later), pubs you know well, pubs you’ve never seen, pubs that are long gone, amusing contributors, angry contributors, even the occasional pub bore - all of pub life is here, even if Mark keeps a tight rein on genuinely obnoxious behaviour. The tone is welcoming but often forthright and always opinionated. “I’m hesitant to use the word ‘banter’, but it has that element to it,” Mark says.
Nostalgia, as you might expect, is a big part of the mix. This is a city of ghosts, and the members’ average age (two thirds are middle-aged or over, Mark says) means there are lots of memories to go around. But it’s not cloying, even if certain pubs are featured more often for questionable historical reasons (The Blind Beggar, for example).
“It is a strong element,” Mark says. “When I wrote the brief definition, I did put in about the history of pubs - but the future is equally important. It’s great to see historic pubs like The Devonshire and The Tipperary [SEE BELOW] reopening.”
What is particularly fascinating, perhaps, is the subjects that create arguments. Cask ale v lager, for example, or where to find the best pint of Guinness. The price of beer is a constant source of amazement, although anyone who’s been out in town recently is well aware prices have ballooned. Then there’s the cask v card schism, which has a touch of the culture war about it; there are even some posters who say they’d refuse to stay in a pub that didn’t take cash.
“I always try, as much as I can, to keep neutral on stuff like that,” says Mark. “As long as there’s no animosity, and people don’t get abusive, it’s fine by me. We’ve all got our personal preferences.”
One of the great joys is when visitors ask for recommendations, although the volume of responses can be overwhelming. Most come back to report on what they’d experienced. “That’s one of my favourite things, when people from overseas are looking for advice,” Mark says. “Then they post afterwards after their experience, the chain of events. That’s a nice thing. It’s always great to get visitors’ views of our pubs.”
But where would Mark recommend for a first time visitor to London? The Marquis in Covent Garden, of which more below. It’s got a great landlord, he says, and atmosphere, that key to any good pub. As much as atmosphere can ever be a component of an online community, you could say the same for London Pubs.
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Support Eko!
Eko, November’s Cover Stars, is crowd-funding to buy brewing equipment for its home in Peckham. Click here if you want to support them.
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Exale Inhale
Walthamstow brewery Exale last week announced that it will no longer sell beer into trade, instead choosing to focus on the company’s two venues and the search for a third, which it hopes to have secured by the end of the year. As part of the restructuring, co-founder Mark Hislop has left the business, although he remains a shareholder.
As well as highlighting the difficulties smaller breweries face in selling beer into trade (in terms of the associated costs - marketing, etc - and the competition from multinationals’ craft brands, like Beavertown, Camden Town and Brixton), this is another demonstration of how downsizing represents one possible future for smaller London breweries in the face of ‘economic headwinds’.
There could soon be many more small breweries exclusively (or almost exclusively) servicing a small group of pubs, like Exale or Saint Monday. It's a better option than growing in search of big-brewery investment that no longer exists.
Andy Solley, Hislops’ business partner, has taken on his role as MD. He denies this is a retrenchment (“it’s a remodelling,” he told me) although the brewery will be making perhaps 30 to 40 percent less beer than before. Hislop, who was also responsible for the craft-beer nightclub Five Miles in Tottenham, is set to move onto new projects.
Solley is phlegmatic about the retreat from the free trade. “I can see it from the operators’ view,” he says. “[If] They’ve got a big brewery offering a nice cellar install, and they don’t think their customers will be that bothered about being served Neck Oil rather than our session IPA, then they’re probably going to make the change because financially it stacks up.”
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It’s a Long Wait
One of London’s oldest pubs could soon be back. The Tipperary in Fleet Street, which boasts some of the capital’s most delightful decoration (including a shamrock-festooned mosaic floor) has been closed for about two years - but a group called Dominus Fleet Street Ltd has applied for a licence. Any objections must be registered by Monday evening.
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It’s An Even Longer Wait
Another revived pub. Grace Land, owner of Saint Monday, is reopening The Duke of St Albans in Highgate, which closed in 2008 and has traded as a restaurant since. According to Grace Land’s co-owner Andreas Akerlund, it should be back in pub mode within the next six to eight weeks. Expect a similar beer experience to the other Grace Land venues, with a wide beer range and regular rotation outside the staple pints.
More good news for North London pub-lovers: the Lord Southampton in Camden can re-open as a pub after the council approved it last month, despite some quite inventive local opposition. In Charlton, meanwhile, the magnificent, burned-out, long abandoned Victoria has been revived - as a Domino’s takeaway.
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Old Gold
This weekend offers a unique opportunity to taste some British brewing history at two small-scale festivals (and two great pubs). Wimbledon has, so their instagram account has it, blended a stock ale with a running ale in the 18th-century style to make Nelson’s Blend, which will be available at the St John’s Beer and Cider Festival on Friday and then at the Trafalgar in Wimbledon.
On Saturday and Sunday, meanwhile, The Old Mitre is hosting a festival of beers served from wooden casks. There will be Bass.
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Quiet Fridays
A year ago, Westminster Council rejected Wetherspoons’ application to convert the former TGI Friday’s in Covent Garden, on the basis of its size and the potential for disturbance it represented. The site, pictured last week, remains empty.
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Stout Shout
Who likes nitro stout? Everyone, apparently. Luckily for you, I wrote about the current stout-mania in British pubs for Vinepair last week - and you can read it here.
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Kernel Kiddies
The Kernel, always at the forefront of London brewing innovation, has introduced colouring books at its taproom in Bermondsey (picture taken from instagram). Kids are always welcome, they say, but Wednesdays and Sundays are the quietest times.
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Two Pubs, One City
The Marquis and The Coach and Horses, both Covent Garden
Two women in sensible coats are inspecting the menu pinned outside The Marquis. Is this the place for lunch? They can’t decide. The varied options (Steak and Ale Pie, Fish and Chips, Goat’s Cheese Salad, Kerala Curry, among many others) don’t seem to be helping. “I don’t mind going somewhere else,” one says to the other, uncertain, perhaps unwilling to make a decision that might ruin the day.
I squeeze past to get inside, and they follow as I hold the door open. Sometimes you need that push.
For me, the push came from Alistair Von Lion, London Pub Explorer and the man behind ‘Support an Independent Pub Day’ which takes place tomorrow, Saturday 10 February. It’s a self-evidently good scheme: independent businesses need support at the moment, what with everything - and, in my experience, they tend to be better than chain venues, too.
How many independent pubs are there, though, right in the heart of town? Not many. I settle on The Marquis - part of a three-pub chain, true, but independent enough in terms of ownership - and The Coach and Horses, which has been run by the Ryan family for decades. They’re appealingly close together.
The Marquis is one of those pubs that gets regular mentions on London Pubs, and is a favourite of Dutton’s. “It has a great landlord, Tommy [McGuinness],” he says. “He’s warm, welcoming, sharing - he’s put his own stamp on the pub. It’s a friendly place, there’s a good mixed crowd.”
Let’s see. It’s 20 to one and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts’ Club Band is plodding along on the record player behind the bar. There’s a warm welcome, and a surprisingly cold cask beer: Decca Supreme Session Ale (£5.25), made by Portobello Brewing Co in West London (as are three of the four cask ales on offer; the other is Proper Job). It tastes fine, but it’s too cold.
Over the next 20 minutes, the pub fills up: half suits, half tourists. Soon it’s standing room only. (An hour later there's a crowd out on the street - see above - half Marquis, half Harp.) A lot of keg beer is served, including a pint of lager shandy for an older gent. Which lager? “Any old lager, please.”
That record player is the pub’s key point of difference. Surrounded by vinyl and musical trinkets, mostly Mod-focused, it’s the heart of the bar, rivalled only by a signed Aled Jones seven-inch and some Norwich City stuff. Music reigns here. Only Fools and Horses is on the telly, but it’s muted so as not to compete with ‘When I’m Sixty Four’.
It’s an enjoyable place to while away half an hour, watching people go by. A young man, holding his small daughter’s hand, looks wistfully across the road into the pub.
The nook I’m in, a sign tells me, has been reserved for Vicki Madgett at 6pm - not wishing to upset Vicki, I finish up. Two middle-aged men, pints of Stella and Mahou, scramble into my spot. “Have you seen Hamilton’s gone to Ferrari?”
Outside, Covent Garden is having a normal one. A teacher stops and turns to address a gaggle of Primary-School kids, warning them not “to be silly”. Some chance. Two old geezers are sitting in the window at Rules. Inside Milk Train, an ice cream shop, a sign reads “Ice Cream Makes You Happy”. Below, behind the counter, a young man sits, his face a picture of disconsolate boredom.
The Coach and Horses is buzzing, inside and out. According to Oisin Rogers of Devonshire fame, this is the only pub in central London apart from his to serve Guinness with more than 80 percent Nitrogen, so that’s what I drink (£6.60). It’s served in the proper glass (ie not the one that looks like a vase), but it’s a bit cold. I appreciate that most people like beer colder than I do, but it’s February for goodness' sake.
A group of posh lads - trimmed facial hair, zip up jumpers or gilets, those black trainers with white bottoms - stand around a table filled with glasses of Guinness. An older group, beautifully-dressed, are on their way to the bar, walking behind them: “Mind yourself,” one warns in old-fashioned Cockney. A couple sits at one of the central high tables; he’s eating a sausage sandwich with knife and fork, she’s drinking tea. Nearby, a Boston Terrier slumbers noiselessly on the green carpet.
On the walls are pictures of the old Covent Garden market, as it was before it left in 1974. This may be the last pub where you can get a feel for those days, from the salt beef on the hot plate to the paraphernalia, much of it decades old.
I could stay all day, but I’ve got stuff to do. A big lad, bearded and booted, takes the seat next to mine and I decide to finish up and leave him to it. Sometimes you need that push.
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London Beer City is written by journalist Will Hawkes. Feel free to contact me on londonbeercity@gmail.com. If you like what you’ve read, please share it with your friends; if you’ve been forwarded this email and enjoyed it, you can sign up here. Unsubscribe here. Help me keep the newsletter free here. Thanks for reading!