The Woodman, Wimbledon Park, SW19

This pub dates from at least the mid-19th century but was rebuilt in 1898. This current brewers’ Tudor beast was constructed in the ‘30s, to the designs of Fuller’s renowned inhouse architect, Thomas Henry Nowell Parr; it’s situated in a none too inviting part of Merton, five minutes’ walk from Wimbledon Park tube. As Rex mentions, his visit was undertaken a few weeks after the last makeover, meaning that his earlier missive and that of MM no longer really apply. There’s a very worn boarded floor, the bar back is bare brick and scaffold, the front clad with planks. Indeed, there’s much bare brick with white paint to what little plaster still clings to the walls. To the right-hand annex is a games machine and pool table and on high, illumination comes from trendy hanging fixtures with filament bulbs. Furniture is mixed and quite modern, there are trendy vertical radiators screwed to walls and the urinals stank, the cubicle lacking paper. Customers were mixed, many visible through the bifold doors to the gravel garden and a smooth, contemporary jazz soundtrack played. There are now no longer any pumps and not even any ‘craft’, me plumping for a half of Blue Moon with obligatory chunk of squished orange bobbing about in it, all for £3.20, served by a cheery barmaid; the landlord was equally friendly. More anodyne than plain bad, this place is marginally better than expected, but the input of Nowell Parr means that this pub would once have had a spectacular interior, which I guess would have garnered at least ** from CAMRA; what a crying shame.

Official site of The Woodman - www.thewoodman.co

Official site of The Woodman - www.thewoodman.co

Facebook page of The Woodman - www.facebook.com

Facebook page of The Woodman - www.facebook.com

I paid my first visit here the other day since it reopened following a major refurbishment. It's nothing like its previous incarnation - you wouldn't know it's the same pub. It's now a fair bit smaller as extensions to the original building have been removed in order to maximise the houses and flats to be built on the pub's land. It now has reclaimed (or possibly distressed) boarding on the floor and comprising the modern bar counter. Everywhere that brickwork can be exposed it has been exposed, and the shelving where the bar back should be is more planking supported by scaffolding. I wonder if the scaffolding here is some sort of homage to the fact that all around the pub is to become a building site when they start to build 11 flats and 7 houses on the previous pub car park and garden respectively? Oviously it's now a smaller pub than its previous incarnation - both internally and externally. instead of the pub garden we know have a few picnic benches on gravel to the side of the pub. I wouldn't call it a garden as there's nothing growing there. Furnishings inside are the usual - a couple of sofas, tall tables/tall stools, and some normal tables and chairs. I say normal, but in fact the chairs are pink plastic jobbies, just like some of the tall stools. But on the plus side the real ale is an inprovement. They had on Doom Bar as their regular, but they also had on Sambrook Wandle, and invariably one from the By The Horns Brewery, and at the moment it is Hopadelic at £4.50 a pint. They also had a range of keg stuff, including a couple from Goose Island, which I guess is entirely appropriate bearing in mind the Goose Island mural on one of the walls. I didn't see any menus during my late lunchtime visit, but I did see some food being delivered to another table. I don't care for the exposed brickwork that was never meant to see the light of day when it was put there, and which now seems to be the design feature of choice for pub refurbishments these days - but that's just my personal opinion and maybe other people think it looks good. But overall it's got the potential to be a good pub, even if I don't care much for these totally modernised pubs. It will be interesting to see how it gets on when it's surrounded by a building site.