The Spurstowe Arms, E8

Official site of The Spurstowe Arms - www.spurstowearms.com

Official site of The Spurstowe Arms - www.spurstowearms.com

The Spurstowe Arms is a back street corner pub that is a short walk from Hackney Central station. Once inside there is a decent sized single U shaped room with the bar facing,the room is bare boarded and the seating is a mix of bench seating and pew seats and a few normal tables and chairs. There was one real ale on the which was Sambrooks Wandle,this was a decent drink. There were menus on all tables so i think it is more of a dining pub,but none in on my Saturday dinner visit. I thought this was a decent enough pub to have a drink in. Pub visited 11/6/2016

This now appears to be a gastropub, with nothing like pub grub on the menu. The "28 day aged Angus burger", plus usual accompaniments is 12.5 (or £12.50 in english). The salad nicoise is also 12.5. There were a couple of ales on - Doom Bar and Sambrook Wandle (£2 a half). My half was served in a stemmed wine glass affair - my fault for ordering a half I suppose. The place is bare-boarded of course, with loads of scrubbed wood tables, some wood settles, and normal chairs - but no upholstery. The bar counter has the usual gastro stuff on it, including a massive vase of flowers (but not lilies for some reason), baskets of limes/lemons, as well as what looked like a couple of antique soda syphons. The black painted bar counter looks an original feature - you can see where the join is between what would have been separate rooms in times past. There was some blues and old rock (Eddie Floyd, et al) being played, but seemingly being piped only to the back on the right, and the busy garden where there was something of a summer party atmosphere going on. Obviously I avoided that area and sat in the quiet area at the front of the bar. There were one or two old mirrors about the place, and with pride of place behind the bar going to a framed and gilded display of moths. A new one on me for a pub. The barmaid said it was an original Victorian piece, and I have to say that it looked like she was right. I didn't mind this place at all. I enjoyed a quiet drink at the front of the bar, but maybe it would get busier and noisy later (I was in at about 7.0 PM on Friday). I guess that these old Victorian backstreet pubs in this area have to provide the environment that will attract the sort of punters that now live around here. This one looks to be a survivor.