The Woodberry Tavern, Stamford Hill, N15

Facebook page of The Woodberry Tavern - www.facebook.com

Facebook page of The Woodberry Tavern - www.facebook.com

Visited 27/05/25 No cask. Keg offering of original SB, Neck Oil, Fosters, the Strawberry & Lime Kopparberg cider, Corona, Heineken, Guinness, Stella, Amstel, Camden Hells and the Eazy IPA. Pub attached to this small chain of North London hostels. This one is one of the most pub like of their venues. There is some outside seating at the front, but inside it is a bare boarded rectangle along the entrance. Bar counter had a zinc-like surface with stools along the length of the bar counter. Regular tables and chairs throughout with a darting area over on the left-hand side and a pool table on the right most fringes. Not a stunner but worse places to have a beer around here for sure.

There's no real ale here, nor was there any sign of food when I dropped in on Monday lunchtime. This pub has something of an odd layout. The centre room where the bar counter's sited has a very low, no doubt false, ceiling. The rooms to the left and right are high-ceilinged, as is the norm with these old Vctorian (or possibly Edwardian) pubs. There are some original features - the bar counter, the Lincrusta style ceiling in the room on the right, and the cast iron capitalled pillars. But overall the pub's clearly seen better days, with the carpet and chairs being among some of the grubbiest I've ever seen. It's now apparently part of the No 8 hostel and pub chain, and although "No 8" signage features prominently, the large Woodberry Tavern signage is still on the side of the building - too difficult to remove possibly. Being effectively a hostel bar as well as a pub open to anyone, you do see some grubby looking individuals hanging around. On the plus side (I think) there are a couple of dartboards in the room on the left, a pool table in the room on the right, and newspapers in a rack by the main entrance. There are TVs around the place of course, with at least the one in the room on the left showing the horse racing. Music was being played in the room on the right, so if you sat in the centre room, as I did, you could hear them both. This is not the sort of pub to which I'm likely to return.