The Antelope, Tooting, SW17

Blackthorn _ left this review about The Antelope

A good size and slightly unusually looking pub, with three arches over the ground floor and a brick façade to the upper floors, it must have been quite an impressive building in it’s heyday, although these days it could perhaps do with a little tidying up.

The front bar is a good-sized, U-shaped room and quite elegant in a slightly faded sort of way, with black slate tiling on the floor, battleship grey wood panelling on the walls to the left and an unusual sea blue ceiling. Much of the sections on the wood panelling were inlaid with picture and shields, whilst a wall to the right had a large collection of plates on display. A full height wooden partition inlaid with etched glass and a door was an interesting feature. Seating was a mixture of mustard yellow padded tools at the bar, lower level green padded stools at the tables, as well as regular chairs and some banquet seating. The curved bar counter was clad with sage green wood panelling.

The pub is much bigger than it initially appears, and opens out towards the read in to two further rooms. The smaller of the two was largely being used by diners on our Sunday lunchtime visit and was again quite elegant with black beams on a pale yellow ceiling, dark wood panelling on the lower part of the walls and yellow painted embossed wallpaper above. Only the floor let it down which appeared to be just some sort of rough concrete. The larger room was really quite impressive, and you could almost imagine being in a large stately home. There was again wood panelling on the lower part of the walls, and this time the ceiling was deep maroon colour, but there was a parquet wood floor which improved it considerably and what was presumably an enormous walk-in fireplace at one time, although these days it was just used for some further pew style seating. Old chandeliers hung from the ceiling and large leaded windows let in plenty of light. Only the presence of a couple of screens, one a large protector, showing the rugby detracted from the ambience.

Fortunately, it’s not a case of style over substance as there was also a decent beer selection consisting of Sambrook’s Wandle, Wimbledon SW19, Twickenham Autumn Red, Volden Session, Volden Pale, Sharp’s Solar Wave and Jaipur IPA. Ciders meanwhile were Aspall’s and Rosie’s Pig. Overall, quite an impressive pub, and with a bit of TLC it could really be quite something.

On 10^th November 2023 - rating: 7
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