Vauxhall

Intermittent sunshine saw me out for a long overdue visit to Vauxhall.  A bit of a down at heel area when I started my researches back in the 90s, and full of boozers, but recently redevelopment has begun to change things.

When I head out on one of these trips I usually have an idea in my mind of what I'm going to find.  For today it was down market pubs, no real ale, lots of pubs I expected to be closed, and probably some pubs I expected to be open but were actually closed.  Let's see how much I got right...

I started with a photo of the long closed Athol Vaults:

When I came here back in '99, my pint of bitter was from a can, and I was the only customer.  Not surprisingly, it closed soon after.  More surprisingly, it's still just about standing.

Then the closed Trinity Vaults:

This building's in much better nick!

Next, on to the Britannia:

Wow!  An unreconstructed 60s or 70s classic, this.  The interior in the bar side looks unmodified except for an odd bit in the corner which might be off sales knocked through?  The varnished matchboarding on the counter front and above the servery look original.  Old lino tiles on the floor, except for quarry tiles at the counter.  The lounge side was deserted.

No real ale of course, I had a lager.

Pleasant 70s rock was playing on the jukebox, two locals were playing pool and there was one more regular sitting at the bar.

The long-closed Jamaica:

On to the Castle:

A much older building than the Britannia, containing a pleasant two room boozer.

There was a hive of activity inside as banners and flags celebrating the imminent world cup were pinned up all over the place, the staff being heckled by the regulars;  "It's upside down" and so on.

The interior is well looked after.  A little panel of old leaded glass above the arch between bar and lounge seems to be the only original feature.

Black clouds arrived while I was drinking, was I going to get wet later?

I continued down Vauxhall Road, looking for the Green Man and the Queens, but seeing no sign at all.  A little further along I came upon the pub with no name:

It turned out to be open, and called the Glass House, although you wouldn't know it!

Back in 1999 I the outside was so scruffy I thought the pub was closed, and walked straight past.  Nowadays, the outside is tidy but lacking in signage, so that my Streetview research had once again led me to conclude incorrectly that it was no longer a pub.

Inside is a clean and tidy pub knocked through into one room, but with a rather unusual curved part-glazed partition creating a snug at one end.  In dire need of some new flooring, but otherwise spotless.

Two regulars chatting in one corner and racing on the telly were the only sounds.

One of the regulars felt the need to apologise for his cheek to the landlord "because there's a stranger in" (i.e. me.)  Once again my attempts to slip in and out unnoticed had failed - As they had in all the pubs so far today.

I continued down the road to the Eagle:

A little gem this one:  A tiny, plain, beautifully cared for one room street corner boozer, with two or three regulars and me keeping the place going.

The glass for my Carling came out of the fridge.

Any attempt to blend in here failed when I nearly went base over apex on the step up to the seating area I had chosen, to the amusement of the regulars.

A music channel on the TV mixed with regulars chattering with the landlady to form the soundtrack.