The Rising Sun, E7

Visited 04/03/26 No cask. Keg offering of Guinness, Budweiser, Fosters, Carlsberg, Stella, Carling, Moretti, Cruz, San Miguel, original and dark fruits SB. This really is an old school venue! The front bar was closed on my visit, the rear bar is L shaped, carpeted with the bar counter opposite the entrance on the right-hand wall. There was a small amount of tall stool seating at the bar counter and then some bench seating seeing regular tables along the frontage / left-hand side. The larger room had four pool tables and a glass cabinet in the far corner displaying silver trophies from competitions of yesteryear. Wood panelled ceiling in this room much lower than the area around the bar counter, with the lighting provided only by the lamps above the pool tables. The screens in here were largely switched off apart from a sole screen showing early evening programming. The most notable feature in the area around the bar was an old fairground style punch strength machine - I have no idea whether it is decorative or still works but sure that whilst this venue might have packed a punch years ago it is not doing so these days. Sort of venue that you would love to think it survives and serves its customers but hard to see this will still be here by the end of the decade.

Official site of The Rising Sun - the-rising-sun-london.edan.io

Official site of The Rising Sun - the-rising-sun-london.edan.io

You can clearly see the erstwhile glory of this place from the various doorways that would have led to separate rooms, the granite columns and architectural detailing on the side of the pub. You enter into a vestibule with a door on the right leading to the saloon bar, with the one on the left into the public bar. Both rooms have identical atractive and forward canted bar counters with horizontal panelling reminiscent of weatherboards. As you would expect, the saloon bar is easily the most comfortable. The public bar on the left is fairly small and basic, and contains some massive pub games. One of them seems to be a punchbag type game, as there is a sign on it saying that kicking isn't allowed. I guess it's that sort of pub. Beyond the public bar is a large pool room with four pool tables and a sort of false suspended ceiling. This was originally a billiards room. To the left of the pub in Shrewsbury Rd is a small building that was once the pub's off sales, but now apparently converted to residential use. It's clear that this massive and magnificent pub has seen much better days, and frankly I doubt whether it will ever see them again. I hope I'm wrong.