Three Crowns, Stoke Newington, N16

This is a huge street corner pub in the heart of Stoke Newington, with a modernised, opened out interior that unfortunately minimises a lot of the building's heritage features. The front seating area, situated under some massive windows, felt a bit like being in a goldfish bowl, thanks to the busy main road outside. Button backed banquettes run around the perimeter with lots of clunky school-style wooden chairs in support. Perhaps the best feature here is the fine anaglypta ceiling covering, which has a golden hue that looks effective in the evening light. The bar extends through a narrow mid-section of the pub and has dark wood counter panels and a rough bare brick bar back with ugly scaffold pole shelving. One end of the bar acts as an open kitchen and food servery area, although not too many people were eating during my stay. Beyond the end of the bar, the pub opens out into a rear seating area - a split level space with chunky wooden balustrades, low tongue and groove panelling and a bunch of plain mirrors and large, old local photos on the walls, plus a pub sign for their former guise as The Samuel Beckett. Music was playing quite loudly, but the cacophony within, on a half filled at best Saturday evening, more than matched it. A table football game can be found to the rear and there is a live music venue downstairs with a very basic bar and low stage. There was no cask ale available, but a decent keg range included options from Verdant, Pillars, ELB, Deya, Drop Project and the like. I tried the Tiny Rebel Cali Pale at £6.50 a pint, which went down well enough. The barmaid was friendly and attentive and we popped back after seeing a gig downstairs and found other bar staff to all be cheery and efficient too. This pub feels like it has a lot of stories to tell, but it's been knocked about so much that there's very little of historic interest to cling on to. The craft keg range was pretty good and went some way to making up for the lack of cask ale and the service seemed to be top notch, so whilst there are definitely better pubs not too far from here, I would still be happy enough to call in again some time. Date of visit - 27th April 2024

A nice looking pub inside and out,now opened out inside and although it must have been an impressive place in the past I didn't think it was too badly modernised. Only three beers on Sunday lunchtime,Hackney Best Bitter, Tintagel Castle Gold and Harbour Special,I opted for the Gold which turned out to be off so moved on to the Harbour Special which was anything but Special so bad I left half of it,I didn't risk a go at the Hackney as there seem to be much in the way of cellarmanship going on here.Its a shame as I quite liked the pub but the beer was disgusting. A 7/10 has become a 4.

They had five ales on in here - Sambrook's Wandle; Hackney Brewery Best Bitter; Sharp's Cornish Coaster; plus the Tintagel Brewery pair of Castle Gold and Harbour Special (£2 a half). There's clearly a Cornish theme here with the open to view kitchen labelled the "Cornish Grill". I saw a chalkboard on the back wall advertising half a dozen starters and four main courses. The latter included ox cheeks with mash etc at £13.50, and onglet steak, peppercorn sauce, chips and salad at £13.95. This must have been an absolutely magnificent pub once, if the exterior, with its large frontage and polished granite pillars is anything to go by. But the inside's been completely trashed (the perpetrators would say modernised) over the years. It's obviously massive inside; the end room, labelled the "Saloon Lounge" has a large skylight, suggesting that it might have been used for snooker at some stage. The whole place is furnished with normal tables and chairs plus some sofas, with more than its fair share of those small, hard, recycled school or church chairs. Obviously there's some exposed brickwork, and too much use of indigo paintwork for my liking. When I was in on Saturday afternoon the place was very busy, and thus very noisy, with family groups. It felt as if I had blundered into a Nando's. The only thing I can think of to recommend this pub is the superb Tintagel Harbour Special. But maybe others like these raucus pubs, and good luck to them I say. This one is cetainly doing something right judging by the numbers in on Saturday afternoon, and the tables that were reserved for later in the day.

This must have been an impressive pub in its heyday.Large L shaped and now a nice modern interior.Lots of seating.Open kitchen to the front.Empty at 7.30 on Wed night.Band rehearsing in the basement and the vibrations were coming up from the floor into my feet.Weird feeling.Three cask beer Hackney-apa,Tintagel -castle gold and my Five points -pale ale.Top beer.Hate big empty pubs with barstaff wiping tables that don't need wiping,moving chairs and trying to look busy.