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Chat about:
Beer of the Week (w/e 27th April 2025) with Thuck Phat
on the Pub Forum
Detail Pages
The Woodman, Battersea High Street, SW11
SW11
SW11 3HX
Reviews (Current Rating Average: 5 of 10) see review guidelines
Tris C left this review about The Woodman
I think this pub must be at least Victorian and according to their website, is ‘A rustic retreat nestled among Battersea’s backstreets’; desolate though it now is, this is the first time I’ve heard of a High Street referred to as a ‘backstreet’ and with an interior designer knackering the place in October 2024, leaving it far from rustic.
With gentrification a long way off, I came here once before in early ’93 when a friend lived nearby; I remember him regaling me with the tale of the neighbouring former Original Woodman’s (now Woodpecker’s) naming history. Back then this was a Hall & Woodhouse pub and the dark panelled interior was a lovely, atmospheric, genuinely rustic example of an unspoilt country-style pub in a fairly central city location. You can see the interior on their website, but essentially, it’s now modern pine boarded. The bar array to the right has a modern new front, the back equally modern with distressed planking – perhaps this is what’s considered ‘rustic’ – with shiny turquoise tiled infill, then a numbered 14-keg ‘craft’-style beer wall which amounted to nothing more than an all-fur coat and no knickers Fizz-U-Like selection from the likes of Crapozcum, Andretti, Guinness, et al. The overall colour scheme is sea green to a multi-zoned room that goes back a long way to a garden beyond. The front area features sea green banquette seating with modern furniture, the mid-section is home to a dartboard with noisy young customers, mixed furniture comprising tall tables with fluted tan vinyl and tubular steel stools or more traditional furniture with studded oxblood chairs; the rear is where you’ll find exposed brick painted various pastel shades, décor in the form of pot plants on high, then a multitude of Oriental-style wicker and bamboo lampshades which wouldn’t look out of place in a scene from The Deer Hunter; walls feature meal deals or those horrible portraits of humans with animal heads; at the time of my Friday 8.40pm visit, customers were a mixed bunch of Battersea professionals, a far cry from the good denizens at the neighbouring Woodpecker.
The cask selection amounted to Fursty Ferret (off), Best and Tangle Foot, a very reasonable £5.30 a pint, in good nick and served by an efficient barmaid.
Although rather characterless, this place isn’t bad by SW11’s unrewarding standards, but it’s all relative; it’s certainly no match for the Fox & Hounds, but with a credible cask choice, is better than the Original Woodman/Woodpecker show next door.
Grudgingly a score of ‘5’.
On 27th February 2025
- rating: 5
[User has posted 2208 recommendations about 2165 pubs]
David Walton left this review about The Woodman
Amazing this traditional pub has not been reviewed for over 13 years. It is a very long rectangular pub with an island bar on the front maybe third of the venue. Tables and chairs v busy with early evening drinkers occupy the area around the bar. Behind are further tables and chairs for diners and there is a small, partly covered beer garden out the back. A quiz was about to start on my visit and so that might explain how busy the pub was on my visit. the venue was decked out with flag of the competing nations in the Euro’s.
Beer wise this remains a Badger Brewery outlet with three of the four hand pumps offering the Tanglefoot, Best and Fursty Ferret with colourful hand clips. They also had an array of their bottled beers for show on the bar. The keg choices were Guinness, Henry Weston’s vintage cider, their own West Coast IPA, Peach lager and straight lager, and Hazy IPA under the Outland brand, Cruzcampo, Moretti, Amstel and another cider from Thatcher’s.
I thought this was an above average pleasant traditional pub. I would suggest if you try it worth making that Wed onwards on the week as a couple of times I have tried to visit this place earlier in the week it has been unexpectedly closed.
On 3rd July 2024
- rating: 6
[User has posted 631 recommendations about 631 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Rex Rattus left this review about The Woodman
This is a Hall & Woodhouse pub, but just Tanglefoot and Badger Bitter on during my visit. The Badger was in good nick, and at £3.10 a pint fairly reasonably priced. I didn’t spot any menus or see any sign of food being available, but at 3.00 PM on a Thursday perhaps I was too late.
The pub itself is nothing special. It’s clearly had a makeover at some time in the last couple of years or so, and it probably hasn’t resulted in an improvement. Philip Carter’s exterior photograph from 2007 shows a more welcoming facade than its current appearance, especially the fact that the mural of a woodman has been replaced by a large sign advertising the “quality pub & dining”. The interior has a modern look, no doubt designed to give it a more sophisticated and chic look. There’s an island bar facing you as you enter, with a modern looking pine coloured top and battleship grey painted top, and the walls are a greenish duck egg colour. There are some armchairs and sofas at the front, some banquette seating on the right plus some standard tables and chairs. There was another largish room at the back beyond the bar counter containing more standard seating. They probably show sport (although I didn’t see any advertised) because there was a large pull-down screen (but rolled up during my visit) in one of the corners at the front.
I reckon that this is a pub that someone has tried to make look more sophisticated in order to attract a more chic crowd, but is probably in an area where they just can’t cut it. The commercial radio station being played didn’t help much either, although perhaps they want to attract an evening crowd, and are not too fussed about one old bloke who drops in for a pint in the middle of the afternoon. But on the plus side they did serve up a decent pint of Badger Bitter. I wouldn’t go out of my way to visit again.
On 22nd February 2011
- rating: 5
[User has posted 2606 recommendations about 2520 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Philip Carter left this review about The Woodman
Sells real ale, Tanglefoot and Badger were on. Used to be a nice pub, not too bad now, if you can stand having kids shouting and thumping the table.
On 14th April 2007
- rating: 4
[User has posted 759 recommendations about 721 pubs]