The Great North Wood, West Norwood, SE27

The Great North Wood is a large and fairly grand looking pub that is very close to West Norwood Train station and just up from the Horns Tavern but on the opposite side of the road. Once inside there is a single room which is wrapped around the bar on three sides,the room is bare boarded,the seating tall tables and stools to the front and mainly normal tables and chairs elsewhere plus a free standing wooden bench seat. There were four real ales on the bar,i had a drink of Harveys Sussex Wild Hop which went down well,the other beers were Sambrooks Pumpkin Pale Ale,Twickenham Naked Ladies and Twickenham Redhead. The pub was very busy with yummy mummys and daddies and their young children. Background music was playing. This is a decent enough pub to do of on a pub crawl round the area like i was. Pub visited 16/4/2016

A large high ceilinged space with a central horseshoe bar, distressed boarded floor and scrubbed tables. There are those uncomfortable high tables and stools along the run of the front windows but thankfully more standard seating elsewhere. Lots of exposed decent quality stock brickwork, a log burning stove, scores of beer bottles above the bar back and over the entrance lobby. A piano sits against a dividing partition and the room has a fair number of large potted plants. Framed colourful posters of local scenes adorn the walls while a set of staggered shelves hold some old hardbacked books. A busy place full of a mid thirties type of crowd, many with youngsters in tow, presumably having lunched and whiling away a Saturday afternoon. Wine is heavily promoted, some sort of festival was advertised, but naturally I stuck to the beer. Four on, Belleville Battersea Brownstone plus Commonside Pale Ale (£4.10), Old Slug Porter and Sambrook's Wandle. A decent drop of local beer and a nice laid back vibe in here.

What a difference a few years make. This pub is unrecognisable from the pub I visited back in 2008; and that pub was unrecognisable from the pub I knew well back in the 60s. As well as the name change, it's been completely made over. Normally I'm not in favour of makeovers, but in this case I am, because the pub had already been pretty much wrecked from the traditional Courage pub it used to be. It still has the central horseshoe bar, but now it's got a chunky wooden surface. By the windows is a row of tall tables with incredibly uncomfortable narrow tall stools, but at the sides of the room are more taditional furnishings, and with a small room at the back having the obligatory sofas. The fruit machines have all been given the heave-ho I’m pleased to say, but there are at least a couple of large screen TVs, but switched off when I was in on Wednesday afternoon. As you might expect there’s a good amount of battleship grey around the place, thus adhering to the gastropub formula. There were single sheet lunch menus (12 – 3PM) on the tables. There’s not much in the way of pub grub, but I guess the “8oz cheeseburger with burger sauce and fries” (10.5 – presumably £10.50) qualifies, although the “rustic sausage cassoulet with toasted sourdough” (at 7.5) doesn’t. The big plus is the re-introduction of real ales, with Twickenham Naked Ladies and the Belleville trio of Balham Black, Spring Break, and Battersea Brownstone all on. All ales were £4 a pint (£2 a half). A word of caution about Belleville beers – as nice as they are, and I sampled all three – they usually come up looking a bit hazy but they are supposed to be like that. We’ve all on at least one occasion in the past been given a hazy, or even totally opaque, pint and been told “it’s real ale, it’s supposed to be like that” by someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about, but with Belleville ales it really is true. This pub has now got the gastro feel, but it’s still very much better than it was. It was doing a decent trade when I was in, including one large table as something of a crèche. I’d go back to this one, but next time I wouldn’t sit on one of the tall round stools!

Not a lot to recommend this pub. No real ale, no character or atmosphere. Just one bar of course – I remember when it used to have two, when it was a Courage house. One side of the bar is occupied by no less than five one-armed bandits or other games machines. I don’t suppose I shall bother to visit again – The Hope around the corner is far superior.