February: Pubs Go Back to Basics, Bermondsey Blues and Australia's Boldest Boozer

A monthly newsletter about London beer and pubs written by Will Hawkes

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What’s Old Is New

Adrian Kinsella carefully extracts a series of nails attaching a sheet to a wall in Stoke Newington’s Coach and Horses. He then lifts the sheet, exposing the wall behind it - and, with it, its remarkable decoration. 

Spread across the dark-wood panelling are a variety of late Victorian alcohol adverts, bold and straightforward, hidden for decades behind modern panels: No 3 Port, 1/- per pint; Brandy Hennessey’s or Martell’s, 2/6 per pint (about a tenner in modern money); and so on. 

There’s also a smaller notice, reading J Jones Wine and Spirit Merchant “Coach and Horses” Stoke Newington - presumably the landlord - and, beneath some of the booze ads, an even older sign, frustratingly incomplete. Glasses only & P … ged in this bar, it reads. A warning not to bring cheaper beer from the public bar into the lounge? Perhaps. 

The sheet is there to protect this remarkable array, found during ongoing renovation: Kinsella and his team feared light and dust could be causing damage. Long-term, the plan is to protect the adverts with resin or - as a final resort - put them behind glass, although Kinsella is loath to turn it into “a relic for gawping at”.

Either way, plenty of care is being taken. You can’t help wondering where we might be if similar care had been shown to London pubs in general over the years, which have been updated and improved so much that many of them are now shut, and too many of the rest are not pleasant places for a drink.

Perhaps, though, the tide is turning. It’s certainly true that a growing group of independent landlords is aiming to foster and promote a more traditional drinking experience, where the customer comes first. Kinsella, who already runs the Bank of Friendship in Highbury and the Carpenters’ just off Brick Lane, is among them, but he’s not alone.

There’s also Alice and Oli Carter-Esdale, preparing to reopen the Hand and Marigold, a delightful orange-tiled pub in Bermondsey; Peter Holt, proprietor of The Southampton Arms in Kentish Town and the Cock in Hackney, who’s about to launch The Pocket in Islington; the team behind South London’s Parched, who have recently revived The Clockhouse in East Dulwich; and Jack Duignan, owner of the Sutton Arms in Clerkenwell, who took on the King’s Arms in Bethnal Green in November, amongst others. 

Kinsella’s team has been working on the Coach and Horses since mid-January, with perhaps another six weeks’ work ahead of them. At the moment, the pub is a shell, bare wooden floors and piles of rubble, but there’ll be fixed seating around the walls, pews, and some standing space too. “I used to drink in here, and we’re going to go right back to the way it was before it was refurbished by the owner before last,” says Kinsella.

A similar approach prevails at the Hand and Marigold, which is closer to opening. Here there are strong links to the past, exemplified by photos of Alice’s great grandfather and great uncle, who lived nearby in the early 20th century, and the 19th-century parquet floor, salvaged from a building in Essex. The bar is made almost entirely from reclaimed early 18th (possibly late 17th Century) oak paneling. 

“We both love traditional boozers’ aesthetics,” says Oli Carter-Esdale. “When we first saw the pub last year, we were blown away by the exterior. With the interior having been ripped out, it felt important to restore something of a traditional aesthetic: a lot of rich wood, cast-iron table bases, comfortable fixed seating, no garish fixtures and fittings.

“Ambience is key — a pub should be warm, comfortable and accommodating.”

Both Alice and Oli have spent years working in hospitality, in London and elsewhere; Kinsella, who grew up in Wicklow in Ireland, worked for Mitchell & Butlers before taking on the Bank of Friendship in 2014. The Carpenters followed in 2023. It’s been a slow process, but it seems like his moment has arrived. There’s a real thirst in London for a more traditional pub experience at the moment, which is good news for Kinsella. 

“I’m trying to put that comfort back into [the pub experience],” he says. “A lot of places, it’s all about trying to get as many bodies as possible in the place. That’s not comfortable. We make pubs that I would want to drink in.” 

It’s not just an exercise in nostalgia, though. When he took on the Bank in 2014, he found a pub with a single women’s loo (“There were no women going in there, unsurprisingly”) and a garden that was used primarily as a rubbish tip. His aim was to turn the pub around, to attract a more varied clientele, to combine traditional levels of comfort with the quality now typical among Britain's best small breweries. That continues at the Coach and Horses, which will have cask ale from around Britain, plus The Kernel’s new nitro stout, amongst other options.

“[It’s about] taking the best of the old-school hospitality and putting it with the best of the new service standards around beer, and the best of the food, the amazing small street-food operators,” he says. “If you marry that together, that’s the sweet spot.”

There won’t be tables laid up for food at the Coach and Horses, though. Kinsella says he’s not chasing numbers; if someone wants to sit over a pint for a few hours, that’s fine. His or her glass won’t be cleared. Beer will cost what it costs. “We’re not gouging, but when [beer is] too cheap, someone is getting the rail and it’s normally the staff,” Kinsella says. “All our staff are on London living wage.” 

The thread that connects the London of today, with its living wage and craft beer, with the London of the 1890s, when a pint of No 3 Port cost a shilling, might seem a skinny one. But, as Kinsella notes, modernity and tradition thrive together elsewhere. Why not here too?

“It’s like when you go to France, and you go to the boulangerie,” Kinsella says. “There’s the bread, that’s the thing. Pubs should be held in the same respect over here [as bread and boulangeries are in France], but they haven’t been for a while.”

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Beer Flights

How far would you go for a pint in a London pub? Chris Croce crossed the world - although, to be fair, he had to for his job. A Qantas 787 pilot, Chris spent last year travelling into London from Perth once or twice a month and - with 48-hour rests between flights - decided to get to know the city better by visiting its pubs.

The impetus for this smart bit of thinking came from Citystack, a scheme that promotes independent pubs whilst offering customers money off. Croce spotted a Citystack map at The Pilgrim in Kennington in January 2024 - and by mid-December, he’d managed to tick off all 56 of the pubs on it, finishing with Simon The Tanner (see above, with Simon the Tanner’s Kundai Chakonda). There can’t be many Londoners who went to as many pubs last year.

Which pub did he enjoy the most? "There were so many great ones, but one of my favourites is the Pilgrim," he says. "The manager and the staff there are amazing. We got to know each other quite well."

Chris rode between the pubs on the capital’s handy (if potentially dangerous) rental bikes, taking in the sights and sounds as he went. He also took along colleagues on his pub jaunts. “It’s a fantastic way to see the city,” he says.

It’s also a reminder of how important pubs - particularly the good ones - are to London’s appeal for visitors. It’s perhaps no surprise that the creator of Citystack, Alison Boutoille, comes from somewhere else, France. It’s probably easier to see the value in pubs if you’re not from here. 

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Brass Neck of the Month

James Watt loves attention, which is presumably why he’s launched a campaign against public sector waste on his Linkedin account. So far, so dull - but the first response below his screed is perhaps more worthy of comment. 

James Yeomans writes that public finances are “swollen and inefficient”, which would be a legitimate if rather dull-witted remark from anyone else. Yeomans, though, was the man behind Hop Stuff, the Woolwich brewery that crowdfunded more than £1m from hundreds of small investors before falling in a heap and leaving said investors out of pocket. Is this someone who should be lecturing others on waste? No. 

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By The Wayside

The bad news just keeps on coming in the brewery world. By The Horns, founded in 2011 in Wimbledon but based in Surrey since 2021, has gone into liquidation, apparently dragged down by bad debt. And Fourpure’s tour of indignity continues: it’s now been bought by Keystone. The comments on the instagram post announcing this new move are worth a look.

Not everyone is struggling. Another former London brewery, Big Penny (itself a rebrand from Truman’s) announced last month that its Walthamstow event space is thriving, with annual sales exceeding £4m. “Christmas sales performance was +36% YOY driven by increased corporate bookings, two sold-out NYE shows and a curling activation which attracted over 3,000 additional visitors,” it revealed in a otherwise humdrum press release. As ever, the money seems to be in hospitality, not brewing.  

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New Green Scene

Since the close of The Experiment in 2023, Cornish haze-kings Verdant have lacked a London base - but no longer. Brixton’s Craft Metropolis is to play host to ‘Verdant In Residence’, with six taps, fridges full of cans, events and other bits and bobs. More details here. 

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Irish, Swiss, European

Gloom hangs over much of London’s brewing scene, but for pubs the picture is more mixed. Two Irish-run classics are currently on the market: McGlynns in King’s Cross, which has been closed since former landlord Gerry Dolan died in 2023, is available to buy for £3m, while The Blythe Hill Tavern in Forest Hill, where long-term landlord Con Riordan has decided to take a much-deserved retirement, is looking for someone new to take charge. 

The closure of Ye Olde Swiss Cottage, meanwhile, has generated plenty of coverage, perhaps because it’s not clear what is intended for the site. Could it be that Sam Smiths’ habit of closing pubs and then just keeping them shut without explaining why has reached London? Watch this space.

There are three interesting new openings. The European in Leyton is soon to open in a former Spoons/Laines property; The White Horse in Hampstead, until recently The Cork and Bottle, is back; and the Knave of Clubs, a collaboration between James Dye, co-owner of the Camberwell Arms, and Benjy Leibowitz, formerly of hospitality giants JKS, is about to re-open in Shoreditch. 

The Knave, which boasts a couple of gorgeous original mirrors, was last a pub in 1994, and has been a French restaurant for much of the time since. It looks like it’ll operate along the same lines as the Devonshire in Soho, with a pub downstairs and food on the first floor. There’ll be beer from Allsops, Guinness and London breweries. 

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Two Pubs, One City: The Rose & Simon The Tanner, both SE1

I haven’t checked the records, but I’m certain this January was the longest and greyest in Britain’s history. (February hasn’t been too snazzy, either). The other day I stepped out of my front door into a thick, freezing miasma of air-moisture. It was about 80 percent humidity, or thereabouts. A terrible vibe. 

Aside from how awful it is, the problem with this weather is it really impairs your inspiration. Normally I find it easy to come up with stupid ideas for this section, but this time there was nothing. Pubs with the word ‘chicken’ in the name; Pubs with the smelliest customers; Pubs popular with the staff of FT’s HTSI section (restaurants). All of these ideas were rightly and resoundingly spiked.

In the end, I was so desperate that I decided to go for a wander to see if inspiration struck - in Bermondsey, because it’s one of central London’s most interesting neighbourhoods, and because I was nearby doing something else anyway. 

Having alighted at London Bridge station, it took me mere minutes to find a pub - although it wasn’t immediately clear it was a pub. The Rose is very understated, done up in dark grey paint with the name in gold above the door. Above that there’s what looks like an old pub sign, with pale-blue decoration - a Union flag and an ensign, an anchor and floral detail - on a white background. Understated and quite attractive.

Inside it was definitely a pub and not a Bermondsey-style art experiment, despite the various pictures depicting former royals in quirky form (e.g. the last queen in a sort of headscarf, except the headscarf is flowers wow trippy). There were exactly the pints you'd expect to find in a London pub during the great gloom of ‘25, namely Camden, Beavertown, Asahi, Guinness, Peroni and that cider with a pig on the label. One handpump was in operation, from which I was served a pint of Dark Star Hophead (£6.30) in a jug.

I can no longer remember how this beer tasted before Fuller’s bought it, but it’s an interesting experience now. The beer was in excellent condition and pretty hoppy, but there was also a huge diacetyl-like butterscotch aroma coming off it. I normally can’t abide buttery beer, but this was actually OK. The butter balanced the bitter, so to speak.

In addition to art, The Rose offers music; first there was something that sounded like Oasis and probably was Oasis, and then the song about drinking in LA that was massive in 1999. 

It sent me spinning into the sort of reverie that becomes increasingly common as you get older and more sedentary. 'Drinking In LA' came out just before I went to live in California for a year, and it gave me a wholly false idea of what drinking in LA was like. I thought it would be like drinking in England but sunny - but it wasn’t. I was only 20 and no-one would sell me booze, whereas in England I bought my first pint at the age of 15. (Maybe the lyrics made all this clear, I don’t know, I didn't listen very carefully.)

In terms of drinking and LA, the best experience actually happened to my future wife, who was bought a drink by Lemmy (RIP) in a Sunset Strip bar. Nothing this good happened to me, although I did develop a passion for Natural Ice, America’s greatest beer. I don’t know what they put in it, but the hangovers are almost aa much fun as the drinking.

Anyway, enough of that bollocks. After The Rose, I continued walking south, past a nice-looking Fuller’s pub - the Leather Exchange - which nonetheless didn’t really appeal, and then east on Long Lane. This is where I stumbled across Simon The Tanner, a pub I haven’t been in for at least a decade.

As I recall, StT was a craft-beer early adopter but then dropped off the radar as everyone else jumped on the bandwagon. The beer range is still excellent - Orbit, Anspach & Hobday, Lost & Grounded, for eg - although I chose Belleville’s Bellevue Mild (£5.80), one of two cask beers on offer, and was soon very glad I did, because it was delicious, chocolate-y and creamy. 

After 15 minutes as the only customer, three women came in, who - it was soon clear - worked at the pub. It was pub quiz night. One of them fielded a phone call from a customer who was fretting they were going to be too late. She swapped their booking from 8.15pm to 8, and all was well (“You’ve got to get here by 8 … they won’t wait!”).

One of them had been on holiday (‘We went to Venice, we didn’t realise it was a cultural city. There was no nightlife. We were chilling in our room by 9pm’), one had itchy teeth, all were vociferous on the subject of a mutual acquaintance and his/her tall tale (“It’s weird, it’s weird, it’s weird. I feel it. I have a sixth sense”). 

Eventually, another customer came in, a diminutive Scotsman sporting a tidy chin beard, and ordered a pint of Mild. Having handed over the baton of lone Mild-drinking customer, I left, heading south to catch a bus home. On the way, I walked past the Hand & Marigold - see above - which, even amid this winter’s endless gloom, was a delight. That said - roll on summer. 

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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!