The Railway Telegraph, Forest Hill, SE23

Facebook page of The Railway Telegraph - www.facebook.com

Official site of The Railway Telegraph - www.railwaytelegraph.co.uk

Facebook page of The Railway Telegraph - www.facebook.com

Official site of The Railway Telegraph - www.railwaytelegraph.co.uk

I think I may have visited this pub once before but my memory is slightly hazy. I know it’s been a Shepherd and Neame pub for some time but was surprised to find on this visit that none of the 4 cask hand pumps had any of their ales on in fact they had no ales on at all! So it was onto bottles , the Spitfire Gold was my choice and as expected it was fine. I’m sure on my (possible) previous visit this pub was open plan and had an old fashioned décor and was carpeted through out, it’s very very different now. The décor is very deep in colour with the front part of the bar resembling a library / drawing room. There’s a large projector screen hanging down that I assume shows sport, on this visit it was turned off and just left hanging. The bar man was very pleasant and welcoming, myself and a pal made up the clientele to 8, with all but 3 of us seat outside on the decking area in the sun trap garden. Lacking atmosphere but it was only 1pm on a Saturday so I guess it livens up in the evenings. May be a worth another visit in the not too distance future.

The Railway Telegraph is a large and imposing looking pub that is a long standing Shepherd Neame tied house at least from the early 80s so i was looking forward to doing this pub. Once inside the pub has been done up to within an inch of its life,the room is roughly L shaped with a dividing wall and the bar faces,the room is bare boarded,the seating bench type and normal tables and chairs,there is a conservatory to the rear left which looked quite nice and had normal tables and chairs. With this being a Shepherd Neame tied house i expected it to have Master Brew on the bar,one of my favourite beers,but no it was not on,so i asked for a drink of Early Bird only to be told it was off,so i had to settl for a drink of Spitfire which was ok but really to my taste. Expensive food was being served to an almost empty room and the pool table has now gone. There was background music playing which was probably the best bit of my visit to this pub. Pub visited 14/5/2016

This is a very imposing looking pub, standing high and proud alone on a corner site, with stone steps leading up to the entrance. It’s a Shepherd Neame house, but with only Master Brew and Spitfire on during my recent visit. The Master Brew was OK – at £2.60 a pint. There’s a pool table at the front; a large pull down screen at the side, presumably for showing major sporting events, and at least three other TV monitors in various corners. None of them were on during my weekday lunchtime visit. All the walls are painted red. There’s nothing about this pub that would lead me to pay a return visit.