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The best pubs in London: the interiors the Campaign for Real Ale has put on its national inventory, the last galleried coaching inn, the pubs where something documented happened, and the ones that do a single thing better than anyone. Filter by kind, or by what's open now.
The long readA History of the London Pub20 minTwo bars built to disagree with each other, and almost nothing touched since 1938.
Historic interiorNotable building
A road house of 1937 and 1938, put up for the pub company G. A. Smith and Dunning on the edge of the Becontree estate, and one of the few anywhere to come through intact. The public rooms are U-shaped around a central Walnut Bar, with a Music Room at one end and an Oak Bar at the other that you reach by its own door from the street.
The point of it is that the two bars were meant to feel different. The Oak Bar is rustic and neo-Tudor, nostalgic for a Merrie England that never was; the Walnut is the other thing entirely. That was the improved pub's whole argument - separate rooms for separate people and separate occasions - and here the argument is still legible. Panelling, glazed partitions, bar fittings, seating, stained glass and fireplaces all survive, as do four original entrances with their glazed doors, fanlights and tiled vestibules, behind a neo-Georgian front of red brick under a hipped pantiled roof.
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.