The Royal Standard, Croydon

Backstreet pub that was the best of the 3 Fuller's pubs we tried in the Croydon area. With a corner location, the room and bar are L-shaped and have a cosy feel. With 3pm opening times during the week, we were the first customers of the day. The barmaid was friendly and she was accompanied by the 9-month-old pub cat, who was also extremely friendly and clearly well fed! London Pride, ESB & HSB are the regular beers. Guests came by way of Hophead & Boltmaker, which made it a much better beer range than I had anticipated. A friendly locals' pub with a warm feel to it.

A traditional backstreet Fullers pub, Multi roomed inside with eight handles on the bar most in use with Fullers related beers including a rather excellent pint of Dark Star Revelation. Given its location I would say this is almost exclusively a locals pub aside from the odd, occasional pub ticker. A quite decent pub.

Great little pub that’s ended up in a poor location with an ncp car park and the flyover adjacent to the pub. Nice characterful wooden interior serving the usual Fuller’s selection. Wish it was in a better location but well worth making the effort to visit.

This is a cracking little pub - shame it's overshadowed by a multi-storey car park and the Croydon flyover. Thankfully it's not changed since the previous reviewer's visit. Entering by a door on the right you're in a very basic bar; bare-boarded, no tables or chairs, just hard wooden stools at ledges by the window. The handpumps in here were double clipped so you knew what was available in the other bar without having to do the full circuit before ordering. It's good to see that, and I don't know why more pubs don't do it. The ales on were the usual Fuller's offerings of London Pride, Chiswick; HSB and ESB (£1.95 a half), as well as a guest ale of Elgood's Black Dog. This is a good selection. Many much larger and more prominent Fuller's pubs don't do anywhere near as well. There was no sign of any menus, but the tray of rolls was at the end of the bar counter. Around to the left of this bar brings you into a small carpeted room with just two or three tables and chairs, which in turn leads into a couple of snugs at the back. The furnishings in these snugs is pretty traditional, but with one including a very ancient solid wooden pew with folding seats. The multi-room format makes it sound quite big, but it's really quite small - snug even. There are a couple of nice old brewery (Fuller's Smith and Turner of course) and distillery mirrors. This is a really nice old backstreet boozer. Let's hope it survives. Perhaps being under the flyover helps, as it presumably wouldn't be everybody's first choice of a location for residential development.

I do like a decent Fuller’s pub and on a recent visit to Croydon the Royal Standard certainly didn’t disappoint. Overlooked by the Croydon Flyover and opposite a multi-storey car park the location leaves a lot to be desired. The picnic table lined beer garden is located directly underneath the flyover so it wouldn’t be a place I would head to for some alfresco drinking on a hot summers afternoon. Thankfully it is easy to forget where one is once inside this unspoilt backstreet boozer. The interior consists of a narrow front bar that I can imagine getting very cosy when the pub is busy. To the right of the bar a dartboard has been shoehorned in and there is also a large plasma screen. I noted that Six Nations rugby was advertised, but I didn’t spot any advertisements for live sports shown via satellite channels. At the rear of the pub there is some seating and around the back of the bar is a small separate room. The bar is stocked with standard draught and the four hand pumps were drawing London Pride, Chiswick, ESB and HSB. I didn’t see any food advertised but there were some premade rolls on the bar. There was only one other customer present during my recent Wednesday afternoon visit so it was very quiet; especially due to the lack of background music. No complaint from me though and I would have no problem returning for another couple of pints.

One of Fullers estate pubs. Small, friendly and community focussed. Full range of Fullers beers including HSB. £3:50 a pint. Filled rolls on the bar at a reasonable £1:50.

Official site of the Royal Standard, contains menu and beer list - www.royalstandard-croydon.co.uk

Official site of the Royal Standard, contains menu and beer list - www.royalstandard-croydon.co.uk

Visited in May 2010 The Royal Standard is a splendidly unspoilt traditional Fullers pub situated on a street corner just off the main High Street It's a small basic unpretentious locals pub with two adjoining bars - a basic public bar with a dartboard and stools around the walls and bar and a more comfortable and slightly larger lounge bar. The pub is virtually unchanged from my first visit in the 1970's, apart from the lounge bar having been slightly extended at the back. Unusually, there's an outside drinking area across the road virtually under the flyover and which affords superb views of a large 1960's multi storey car park. On my May Bank Holiday Monday visit, unbeknown to me in advance, a beer festival which had started on the previous Saturday was still in progress and there were still 8 barrels on stillage in the lounge bar. A promotional leaflet listed a total of 10 beers on offer during the festival - which included Skinners Betty Stoggs, Wadworths Henry's IPA, Robinsons 4-4-2, Brains On The Head, plus 3 beers from the local Westerham Brewery. Martin told me that this was the 3rd festival the pub had held and that more would follow later in the year. Situated not far away from The Dog and Bull, on which I have just posted, this is a pub that really should be included in any Croydon pub crawl.