Lady Hamilton, Kentish Town, NW5

Just a short way down the road from Kentish Town station, this is a fairly cosy, single room pub that was doing a decent trade on a mid-week evening. It’s a pretty simple pub with a single bare boarded room, benefitting from rugs thrown down here and there to dampen down the inevitable noise. Large windows along two sides allow lots of natural light in during daylight hours, although the muted lighting on my visit helped create a pleasant ambiance. The remaining walls have either been painted in dark colours or covered with floral wallpaper and the servery runs along the left-hand wall, with a simple wood panelled counter and mirrored bar back, turning into some sort of food servery towards the rear, despite no obvious evidence that the pub does any sort of food. A couple of TV’s were mounted at either end of the room, but both remained off, in favour of a loud and eclectic indie soundtrack. The walls have been decorated with a lot of fashion portraits, covers of Vogue magazine and other such bits of couture. The ceiling is also worth checking out thanks to a nice criss-cross moulding in a floral design with numerous roses in between. There are two handpulls on the bar, but neither were clipped on a Tuesday night, so I opted for a Siren IPA on keg, which was available alongside brews from the likes of Two Tribes and Beavertown as well as plenty of mainstream stuff. The bar staff were friendly enough, if a little passive and there was a nice post-work buzz despite the freezing temperatures outside. I thought this was a pretty decent pub with quite a likeable, cosy interior, decent seating and some attractive features. The lack of cask ale was a bit of a letdown and the service wasn’t the sharpest, but I quite enjoyed my time here and would pop my head in again to see if they had anything more interesting on the bar.