Categories
20th Century Pub london pubs

London’s best pubs in 1968: mini-skirts and toasties

The January 1968 edition of Town magazine (“For men”) includes a guide to pubs in London and the surrounding area. How many are still there, and still good?

The guide is split into sections starting with pub entertainment. The first entry is a theme pub – one of our pet topics:

The Blue Boar, Leicester Square. Cheerfully, blatant subterranean restaurant and bar devoted to the Robin Hood theme: ‘Kindly deposit ye arrows,’ and ‘Knights’ and ‘Dames’ etc. Sounds awful, but is tremendous fun. Mock torches, waitresses in medieval gear, Maid Marian cocktails, free cheese ‘from the Sheriff’s larder’ and cut as much as you want.

Now, how’s that for a flying start? The London Picture Archive has an image from 1975. The magnificent building is still there but is no longer a pub.

There was modern jazz at The Bull’s Head in Barnes with “American stars”. It’s still there, still a pub, and – amazingly – still hosts a jazz club. There’s a pleasing sense of permanence there. 

Other jazz pubs included The Iron Bridge in Poplar (Marylanders on Sunday, New State Jazzband on Monday, Hugh Rainey All Stars on Tuesday and Alan Elsdon’s Jazz Band on Wednesday; demolished) and The Tally Ho in Kentish Town. (Became a punk pub, then demolished.)

If you wanted protest songs and folk music the anonymous author suggests The Horseshoe Hotel on Tottenham Court Road on Sunday evenings. There was apparently also cheap food to be had in the dive bar. This 1976 photo shows it in Ind Coope livery. It was demolished years ago.

We’ve written before about The Waterman’s Arms on the Isle of Dogs. As the Town pub guide explains:

Where journalist and TV personality Dan Farson inaugurated the now wildly successful Stars and Garter era of modern East End music hall. Few East Enders in sight but packed for the excellent entertainment.

It’s still there as a pub and boutique hotel, without music hall acts.

The Deuragon Arms in Homerton is described as “the best of the untainted and uncommercialised East End fun palaces” where “Marks and Sparks shirts glitter in the ultra-violet lights”. Snooty! It’s long gone, replaced by flats.

Also mentioned in this section are The Lamb & Flag, Covent Garden; The Prospect of Whitby in Wapping; St Stephen’s Tavern in Westminster; The Samuel Whitbread on Leicester Square; and Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street.

LP cover for "The Entertainers" featuring a warm Victorian pub interior.
A 1960s record featuring the interior of the Waterman’s Arms.

City of London pubs in 1968

This section features a lot of wine bars, chophouses, and quasi-pubs. But there is one excellent sounding theme pub:

Square Rigger, King William Street, EC3. A modern pub with a yo-ho-ho theme, as befits a boozer only a stone’s throw from the Pool of London. Canned noise of the sea, ship’s timbers, etc, but none the worse for it considering the large number of dirty and characterless pubs in the City.

From the outside it was a concrete booze bunker and was demolished in the 1980s.

Engraved glass on the door of a pub with Restaurant and Saloon Bar.
The Antelope in 2017.

The pubs of Belgravia

This section has a list of familiar classics, many of which we’ve visited, and some of which we wrote about back in 2017.

The Antelope on Eaton Terrace, the guide says, is “a male pub, full of beer swillers and hearties”. The Duke of Wellington, also on Eaton Terrace, is “full of the classier flat dwellers” and “Lots of lovely girls” The Grenadier on Wilton Row has been in every single pub guide for decades, as far as we can tell. Here we’re told it has “the ghost of a grenadier flogged to death” and “classy birds, but usually accompanied”. The Wilton Arms on Kinnerton Street “claims to be the smallest pub in London” where you can “get served by one of the miniest skirts”. All four of these pubs are still there and still trading, in one form or another.

The Red Lion in Pimlico is an unusual entry. It’s described as “a fine modern pub built into a block of GLC flats”. You’re probably wondering about “the birds” aren’t you? This being a less posh neighbourhood at the time the author got in a dig alongside his sexism: “a little more obviously bleached”. This became The Belgravia which, oddly enough, was one of the pubs Jess drank in a lot after work during the noughties. It’s now a restaurant.

An ornate Art Nouveau pub at night.
The Black Friar.

Quirky architecture and vibe

The section called ‘Character pubs’ starts The Black Friar at Blackfriars with its unique Art Nouveau decor which was literally a cause célèbre in the 1960s. It’s still there, still beautiful, but perhaps not a great place to drink these days.

Carrs on the Strand grabbed our interest with mention of its new “German Schloss Keller” with “Lowenbrau and Bavarian snacks served by mini-skirted waitresses”. There was a trend for this back in the 1960s and 70s which we wrote about for CAMRA’s BEER magazine. That piece is collected in our book Balmy Nectar if you want to read it.

The Surrey Tavern on Surrey Street also rang a bell and that’s because it was the Australian pub in London in the 1960s: “If you want to know what Australia’s like skip the pamphlets and come here.” It’s not only gone but doesn’t seem to have left much of a trace on the usual pub history websites.

The others mentioned in this section are The York Minster in Soho (AKA The French House), which is still going, and a bunch of wine bars like El Vino.

An illustration of some pies adapted from an old cook book.

Pub grub

There’s a relatively small list of pubs chiefly known for decent food. Fittingly, one is The Earl of Sandwich in the West End where “they commemorate their namesake by selling at 9d a round some of the cheapest sandwiches in London”. It was apparently opposite The Garrick Theatre. Does anybody know exactly where?

The Museum Tavern in Bloomsbury gets in because it had cheap student meals. It’s still there although we’ve not been for a while and don’t know if it still serves Old Peculier as a regular beer.

The Albion at Ludgate Circus gets a positive rave review for food “deliriously superior to usual pub fare” including toasted sandwiches and home-made pies. Toasties and pies! That’s really all we ask. It’s still there and looks rather handsome. Why have we never noticed it before? Despite this being another part of town where Jess hung out a lot 20 years ago, she doesn’t recall ever drinking there.

Beyond the boozer

For additional context, the same issue also has Cyril Ray’s pick of the wines, including Grande Fine Champagne 1948 at £6 a bottle; a recommendation for the film the Dutchman starring Laurence Harvey; and high praise for Dusty Springfield’s album Where Am I Going.

Why write a post like this?

That’s a good question. It’s mostly so that if someone is researching any of the pubs above they might find a nugget or two of useful information via Google.

Increasingly, we think of this now rather ancient blog as, among other things, a sort of index to our library of books, magazines and cuttings about beer and pubs.

And if nothing else, it was fun to spend an hour or two in 1968, where things were different, but also the same.

Categories
bristol pubs

Best pubs in Bristol in 2024: our guide on where to drink

First published 07.06.2018; last updated 01.01.2024
Bristol has a huge number of pubs and a decent number of breweries. If you’re in town for a few days or hours, where should you go to drink?

We’re asked for advice on this all the time and decided that, rather than keep typing up the advice in emails and DMs, we’d give it a permanent home.

We haven’t been to every pub in Bristol, although we’re not far off, having been to 300.

We’ve visited most of those in the city centre, and most several times.

In general, Bristol pubs are pretty easy to find, and fairly easy to read.

Chain pubs look like chain pubs, craft beer bars look like craft beer bars, and so on.

You won’t go too far wrong following your instincts.

There are lots of hidden gems in the suburbs and up side streets, too, so do explore.

And if you want to keep things loose there are some decent crawls with varied and interesting pubs:

  • St Michael’s Hill – Zero Degrees, The Open Arms, The Robin Hood, The White Bear (sometimes), Beerd, The Highbury Vaults.
  • Gloucester Road – too many to list but start at The Inn on the Green and keep going until you’re done, or in town. Or vice versa.
  • Kingsdown – The Hare on the Hill, The Hillgrove Porter Stores, The Kingsdown Vaults, The Green Man, The Highbury Vaults.
  • King Street – Small Bar, The Royal Naval Volunteer, The Beer Emporium, Llandoger Trow (Continental lager specialists), The Old Duke (jazz and Oakham Citra), among others.
  • Bedminster – there are a lot of pubs in Bedminster, from very down-to-earth to super-crafty. Standouts The Old Bookshop (see below), Alpha Bottle Shop & Tap, and the Bristol Beer Factory taproom.

Before we get down to business we must once again thank Patreon supporters like Phil Cook, Peter Sidwell and Robert Baker who justified us spending a bit too much time putting this together. If you find this post useful please do consider signing up or at least buying us a pint via Ko-Fi.

Categories
london pubs

Classic Pubs in Posh London

Meeting up with friends at the weekend we decided that, instead of trawling round the usual haunts from our post-student days, we’d take the opportunity to test out another section of Green & White’s Guide to London Pubs from 1968.

With a plan to catch the last train out of London back to Bristol we didn’t want to stray too far from Paddington and so picked the section entitled ‘Chelsea’ which includes The Victoria not far from the West Country terminus. Based on a review of the pubs’ own websites, and previous experiences with this kind of exercise, our expectations were fairly low.

The book's map of Chelsea.

We went first to a pub we did know, The Star Tavern in Belgravia, where we used to drink occasionally even before we started blogging, when we both worked in Westminster. Green & White say:

The Star Tavern… is one of the handsomest pubs in London, both outside and in, contemporary with its surroundings. It is a fine Georgian mews pub (a rare Fuller’s house in this part of London) built on generous lines and — being away from the hurly-burly of the main roads or business areas — free from that maddening tidal crowd which packs more central pubs at lunchtime and evening opening…. The Star is the kind of place you might expect to run into James Bond, and if he is not familiar with the pub, he should be.

Approaching The Star is still magical, through a stuccoed arch and over cobbles, and into the pub’s warm tractor beam glow. Inside it felt approximately (runs calculations) 32 per cent less ‘authentic’ than we recall it, having apparently had a visit from Fuller’s corporate style police. But there were still plenty of normal people knocking back pints (“They get a lot of butlers and doormen in,” someone said at one point) and the overall feel was of a secret refuge, especially in the implied snug by the counter. Fuller’s ESB tasted as good as we’ve ever had it, with the quality of the London Pride not far behind.

Door at The Antelope.

Next, we made a brief detour to The Antelope — not in the 1968 book but also in a mews and with similar ‘classic’ status — to pick up another of our mates. This pub, too, was stunningly cute. In this part of town, in 2017, it ought to have gone full grey-paint-gastro but, no, it was dark, well-worn, sparkling and intimate, all corners, cubbyholes, ale and gin. The beer (more Fuller’s) was great there, too.

Back on track we pushed on to The Nag’s Head which upped the ante considerably. How is this pub real? With its Adnams ale and creaking floorboards it feels as if it’s been transplanted from Southwold or perhaps more specifically the Southwold of 1985. Or maybe it’s a film set? It is tatty in the best sense with an eccentric layout which means you can find yourself sitting below the level of the bar staring at a rack of knives under a sagging union jack, or next to a vintage end-of-pier penny slot machine by a roaring Victorian range. NO MOBILE PHONES say the signs but nobody — not the couple snogging intensely at the bar or the moustachioed bloke in mulberry-coloured waistcoat and bow-tie doing a crossword — looked as if they particularly wanted to.

The Nag's Head.

The Wilton Arms a few doors along was a comparative let-down being too bright and too Shepherd Neame, with Spitfire at its nail-polish-remover worst. Even so it was rammed and rowdy with more genuine pub character than many others in London — a miracle considering the sterile acres of pristine mansions for absentee millionaires that surround it.

Sadly The Grenadier, the classic of classics, was closed for public order reasons (there is a Christmas fair in the park nearby and the authorities are apparently concerned that people will stagger to the pub from there and cause trouble for the well-to-do mews dwellers) so we finished with one more in the Star. There the whole party sat in quiet amazement.“I can’t believe I’ve never been to any of these pubs before,” said our mate, a born-and-bred Londoner who has been to Italy more times than he’s been to Belgravia.

It is odd, given that these pubs are recommended in the 1968 guide, the 1973 edition, many editions of the Good Beer Guide, Roger Protz’s 1981 rarity Capital Ale, and so many others. Perhaps it’s because we’ve all been trained to assume the worst — that what was good 30 years ago must almost inevitably be either gone or gone to rot today, and that London in particular Ain’t Wot it Used to Be. But here, in these mews pubs at least, protected from the real world by the sheer weirdness of West London, there’s some kind of persistence.

If you haven’t been, and especially in the run up to Christmas when twinkly and twee is in order, do treat yourself.

Categories
Beer history

Hitchhiker’s Guides to the Beerosphere

Inn guides, whether sponsored or not, have long been a feature of the British way of life — part of the fabric you might almost say. But they have tended to concentrate more on the places which find themselves on calendars and Christmas cards and not at all on the pubs which are the warp and woof of the brewers’ investment.

Derek Cooper, The Beverage Report, 1970.

The very first edition of CAMRA’s newsletter, What’s Brewing, from June 1972, contained an important statement of intent: work had begun on a guide to pubs which would focus solely on ‘the merit of their ale’ without regard to ‘Historic value, trendiness, outside surroundings or other such criteria’. It was to be called ‘the List’ and, as we would say these days, was to be ‘crowd-sourced’ — that is, collated from the recommendations of members all over the country.

In addition to their focus on food, music, go-go dancers and architecture, rather than beer, previous pub guides also had other flaws.

  • Geographical coverage. Egon Ronay’s pub guides, from 1963 (as far as we can tell), tended to focus on London; as, of course, did Green and White’s guides to London Pubs from 1965. Even when Ronay went national, London got far more than its fair share.
  • Method. Derek Cooper mocks the ‘specially trained team’ who surveyed c.1,000 pubs on Ronay’s behalf: what made them qualified to judge? This review of the 1983 edition questions how they chose which pubs to consider and whether they had enough data to work from, having visited too few.

CAMRA’s List emerged as the Good Beer Guide — a stapled, 18 page leaflet — and, eventually, in 1974, became a 96-page printed and bound book, with the help of the printing arm of board-game manufacturer Waddington’s. (Beric Watson, the firm’s Managing Director, was a ‘traditional draught’ drinker himself and had, in fact, published the unfortunately titled Hand-Pulled Beer and Buxom Barmaids, a guide to pubs in Leeds, c.1971.)

The first  run of 30,000 copies of the CAMRA Good Beer Guide (GBG) sold out within six months of its publication in April 1974, despite (or because of, Brewdog-style…?) some headline-grabbing controversy over its suggestion that Watney’s should be avoided ‘like the plague’, censored by the printers at the last minute, and amended to read ‘at all costs’.

It seems, pretty instantly, to have become an institution — the perfect Christmas present for a beer-loving relative, a nice fit for the glove box of the car. By the time the second edition went to print, however, the realisation had dawned that pubs could come out of the Guide as well as go in, and some landlords sulked, just as they do today.

The 1976 edition of Ronay, while it still makes plenty of mention of food, looks to us like a blatant attempt to imitate the look and tone of the GBG. The simply-titled Pub Guide includes an entire page on ‘Real ale versus keg’, somehow managing to explain the whole ‘controversy’ and the success of ‘persistent comsumer pressure’ in preserving cask ale, without mentioning CAMRA. The term ‘real ale’ is scattered throughout, marked against those pubs offering it, though without quite going as far as to use it as a benchmark for quality.

These days, Des de Moor’s CAMRA Guide to London’s Best Beer, Pubs & Bars and Will Hawkes’ Craft Beer London iOS app represent something of a return to Ronay’s approach — geographically specific, and ‘curated’, with no real pretence of democracy — but retain the GBG’s relentless focus on beer above all else. Meanwhile, ‘user-generated’ pub review websites offer the opposite: access to the unedited reactions of thousands of pub-goers, each offering a rating based on their mood, the state of the toilets, whether their dog got a bowl of water, and, just occasionally, the quality of the beer, averaged out to a more-or-less meaningful number.

Forty editions later, the GBG, slap-bang in the middle between those two approaches, keeps coming out, and keeps selling.