Last night I visited the Cock & Lion on Wigmore Street behind Debenhams, a nice little pub with four ales on (including Black Sheep, quite unusual in London).
However, the main reason for my visit is that I wanted to play pool with some friends, but this was somewhat scuppered on finding that the upstairs room that used to have two half decent tables in it has been transformed into YET ANOTHER “dining” room…
This put me in an unusual position. I used to play at least a frame or two every week before I moved to London, so could tell you in fine detail of the pool tables of Cheltenham and, to a lesser extent, Oxford. But I had only one vague feeling of where else I might find a table in walking distance of where we were.
Fortunately, the hunch paid off. Nellie Dean’s on Dean Street has a perfectly adequate quid a game table in its upstairs room (along with a slightly temperamental juker and Deuchars IPA on tap) where we had several games of doubles with another group of people (it was winner stays on), but is this the last pool table in town?
Surely in a mythic age gone past almost every pub big enough had a pool table. In fact, in my travels around the country, a lot of pubs outside london still do, so why has town so convincing turned its back on the noble game? Can it just be the feeling that pool tables increase pub violence (pdf report by SIRC from 1990 which actually says that good pub management can avoid this problem)? or is it just, in the days of pub needing to take a grand a day to not be closed by their landlords, that a pool table takes up too much space, space that could be filled with [shudder] diners.
Or am I wrong? have I just been walking round with my eyes shut? Please list in the comments any other central pubs with pool tables!
Does The Castle in Farringdon still have a couple of tables upstairs? Not been in there for a few years.
I think the phrase “every pub big enough” is the key one here. I was hard pushed to think of any pubs in Soho that was large enough to comfortably fit in a pool table and at the same time not be spilling on the streets at 6pm. Not so sure if dining space is the issue around there, rather drinking space.
A lot of roughish suburban “sports” pubs still continue with a couple of pool tables etc. And of course we have two pool tables, and often Black Sheep on at SOAS!
I haven’t been there in a little while but I’d be v surprised – and annoyed – if the three tables upstairs at the Black Horse on Rathbone Place had gone.
There’s two american tables in the Comedy, a not great and tourist frequented pubbar below Leicester Square.
aw, bless the american tables with their pockets the size of dinner plates…
pete, as with all the ones we’ve mentioned so far, it is the upstairs room that is given over to pool, and there are plenty of soho pubs with those…
also, how “stupid” of me to forget the Sports Cafe on Haymarket which has about 98347865784 pool tables, but is SHITE
the godawful scream pub on TCr always used to have a couple of tables upstairs, also in that neck of the woods, the Mortimer arms (on tcr – near the Jeremy Bentham) had one in the back room.
Heya,
I’ve started to try and list all the pool and snooker tables at the pubs in visit in central london. If you have any advice for places to hit please give me a shout but my current list is here:
http://barblog.co.uk/tag/fun-pool-or-snooker-table?s=london