The Bell, East Molesey

This is a large backstreet pub with a slightly rambling interior that retains separate rooms despite having been knocked through in a few places. The servery is located on the back wall of a central space which has a couple of seating areas off to either side and a dining room over to the front right. The whole pub has low tongue and groove wall panels with plain painted and bare brick uppers, dark beams and lintels, and a mix of quarry stones and wooden boards on the floor. The bar has a dark painted counter with a modern white tile bar back and a nice old gantry with some leaded glasswork. Seating is mixed throughout, but all of a good quality and in plentiful supply, whilst the walls have been decorated with black and white photos, old enamel signs, corporate blackboards and a few bits of breweriana, and I spotted at least one more leaded, stained glass pane bearing a bell image. The left-hand room has a large TV screen for live sports and a dartboard, whilst a door to the rear right leads out to a beer garden, with a few benches also available out the front. Energetic R&B tunes played in the background, becoming less audible the futher to the right you moved. The pub has featured in recent editions of the Good Beer Guide and had three cask options on the go when I arrived - Greene King IPA and Abbot Ale plus St Austell Tribute (£5.25 a pint). The Tribute was in GBG standard condition and the staff seemed quite friendly. A mid-week visit found a decent crowd of locals in attendance, making for a pleasant atmosphere, particularly in the area around the bar. I thought this was a nice backstreet pub with some interesting features, well-kept beer and an unusual layout. The beer range was maybe not the most exciting, but that's not so much of a problem when it's kept this well, and I'd say that this is a good pub to know about if you ever find yourself out in this part of town. Date of visit - 3rd September 2024

The Bell page on the Greene King website - www.greeneking-pubs.co.uk

The Bell page on the Greene King website - www.greeneking-pubs.co.uk

A nice pub hidden away down a residential back street, obviously the same as described in Blackthorns review which was a couple of weeks before my visit. I probably turned up at the wrong time , early on a Saturday evening with live football just started and the place was rammed,maybe because of this I didn't notice any of the bland corporate feel described below.I had a pint of Otter Amber which was in good shape if not overly interesting. I liked the pub but must give it a go at a quieter time.

An attractive looking pub located in a quite back street near the church, buts nonetheless just a couple of minutes’ walk from the main road, it has quite an “olde worlde” appearance with various rather wonky bits of the building jutting out an odd angles. It was then something of a disappointment to get inside and find it much more contemporary than I expected, having clearly undergone a very unsympathetic “refurbishment” at some point. It’s been divided up in to a number of different rooms internally and is now something of a rabbit warren. The only original features remaining are a rather wonky ceiling and some very old supporting timberwork which must have been a great feature at one time when the rest of the pub would have been of a similar style. The flooring consisted of tiling by the bar and elsewhere the sort of generic patterned carpet that you find in countless pubs and in fact the whole place had a rather bland, corporate feel to it. Paintwork was predominantly a shade of green/grey, whilst a few old planks of timber had been fixed to the wall in places as well as some old black and white pictures of the local area, including the high street, river and the world’s largest grape vine at nearby Hampton Court. Several TV’s were showing a sports channel, although fortunately the volume was off so this was not too intrusive and there was also a darts board off to one side. A fireplace that was clearly disused had a pile of logs stacked up next to it for some reason which I can only assume was decorative. There were more beer pumps on the bar than might have been expected, although four were from Greene King with their Abbot Ale, Old Speckled Hen, IPA and Band of Brewer’s IPA. These were joined by Tribute and their own Bell Ale which was apparently brewed by the Twickenham Brewery. The solitary cider was Symonds Founders Reserve.

Official site of The Bell - www.bell-pub.co.uk

Official site of The Bell - www.bell-pub.co.uk

Known locally as "The Crooked House", The Bell is a large rambling pub with a low beamed ceiling, dark mustard/nicotine and red walls and subdued lighting. The interior is effectively now one space but the pub's layout is such that the different areas feel separated being joined as the are by archways and a narrow corridor link. Years ago the place would have been a warren of rooms, therefore providing a suitable hiding spot for the aforementioned highwayman, Claude Duval. Whether the pub's current appearance is as a result of alterations to the internal layout is difficult to tell, but no opportunity is lost to celebrate the mix of unlikely angles and leaning gables with framed information liberally displayed inside. Seating is mostly traditional, even rustic in areas, but there is the odd sofa. There a a few fireplaces including a large inglenook, and the clearly more recent bar has some stained glass along the gantry. There is a usable dartboard at one end, and a couple of fruit machines which seemed more intrusive than usual to me as their garish flashing displays stood out in the gloom of the interior. There are six handpumps on the bar, but there was only one on yesterday afternoon, and that was Courage Best. One was reverse clipped but the others had nothing. It seems reading other reviews that I was unlucky but this still seems to be a poor show in my opinion.