In operation for nearly three centuries, this Young’s pub boasts a glorious Victorian interior, dating back to a time when stars of the stage and music hall were regulars here. Publicity shots of Lillian Braithwaite, Seymour Hicks and contemporaries form two decorative rows across the walls of a cosy, varnished-wood interior, while the central horseshoe bar is ringed with original etched-glass snob screens, used to shield Victorian gentlemen when liaising with ‘women of dubious distinction’. They would have been wooed by tunes from the polyphon, a 19th-century music machine still standing in the corner.
The Young’s beers are no more exciting here than in other pubs owned by the brewery (although they do seem to have improved since brewing was moved from Wandsworth). Still, the room is handsome enough to make up for it. Food, inevitably, is as trad as it gets.