The Richmal Crompton (JD Wetherspoon), Bromley

The Richmal Compton is a Wetherspoons pub that is almost opposite Bromley South train station,so it was off the train and straight in here. Once inside there is a large L shaped room with the bar on the right side,there are raised areas to the front front right and rear left,the seating is mainly normal tables and chairs with just a few tall ones,the rear right area is set aside for family dining,children are not allowed out of this area. There was a decent choice of real ales on the bar,i had a drink of Weltons English Pride which went down very well after my journey down here,the other beers i noted were Upham Stakes,Oakleaf Flakes,Banks & Taylor SOD,Acorn Bulls Eye, plus the usuall Spoons beers like Ruddles and Abbot. The pub was very quite and almost empty on my mid Saturday morning visit,i was happy enough having a well laid back drink here. Pub visited 14/2/2015

This is a converted supermarket rather than shop dating from 1999 and is diagonally across the road as you leave Bromley South Station. I arrived here around 12:30 and it was starting to fill with young suits from the nearby offices. I think I prefer the usual Spoons daytime saddos to this lot. It's a huge barn of a place with large windows down one side making it fairly light. Once again the dreaded Doombar was here as an uninvited guest. There were ten pumps, with one line being cleaned, the two GK beers and the boring Doombar that left six guests. These were Brewster's Calamity Jane, Young's Special, Deuchar's IPA, Double Maxim with Portobello Carnival and By The Horns Diamond Geezer as two Locale beers. I went for the Diamond Geezer (£2.29) which was in good condition.

Just over the road from Bromley South station, the Richmal Crompton is very handily located for anyone looking for a quick pint whilst awaiting their train and, given that it’s a Wetherspoons, will probably be the first port of call for anyone arriving in town for the first time. The pub used to be a Lloyds No 1 Bar but has since been rebranded as a standard Wetherspoons and the interior reflects this by falling somewhere between the two. It has a large L shaped interior with a wide space at the front packed with seating before the servery appears along the right hand wall. Opposite there is ample room for vertical drinking as well as a raised section under some large windows which look out over the adjacent arcade. The room extends to the rear right, past the end of the bar where another large open space has been filled with tables and chairs and a few smart looking booths line the back wall. There are also some large bookcases here, around which a few sofas have been arranged. The décor is typical of the chain, such as the images of famous people with local connections on the walls and the TV screens showing rolling 24 hour news channels. I counted ten hand pumps at the bar, but just three guest ales were available on my visit. I opted for a pint of the Batemans Summer Swallow and was very pleased to find it was in excellent condition. The staff were, with the odd exception, a surly but efficient bunch and the food I tried was no better or worse than you’ll find in other ‘Spoons outlets. Some of the comments below made me wonder what horrors might await me in here on a Saturday night, but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed a lovely pint in familiar, if uninspiring, surroundings. Bromley has little to offer in beer terms, so I would consider this place to be a relatively safe bet for future visits.

This pub is named after the lady who wrote the Just William novels, and who was also a teacher at Bromley High School when she really got stuck into her writing in earnest. The pub is a bog standard Wetherspoons and is typical of the brand, being an enormous drinking barn, with the usual mix of tall tables/stools, sofas, and normal tables and chairs. It’s fairly characterless, but is ideally placed opposite Bromley South station, and of course provides the usual range of cheap beer (there were six guest ales on during my visit – the Orkney Red MacGregor I had was £2.35 a pint) and pub grub. Numerous prints of miscellaneous people adorned the walls (Darwin, Malcolm Campbell, David Bowie, Siouxsie Sioux, et al). This is not the sort of pub you make a beeline for to enjoy a traditional pub experience, but it does what it sets out to do in providing cheap food and drink for the Bromley masses, and is handy for anyone waiting for a train.