Kings Arms Hotel, Hampton Court, East Molesey

Official site of the Kings Arms, contains menu and wine list - www.hamptoncourthotel.com

This is now a Hall & Woodhouse pub with the usual ales on offer. The Badger Bitter I had was excellent. Being right by Hampton Court Palace it inevitably attracts a lot of tourists, but it seems to have avoided becoming a tourist trap. The front of the building declares it to have been established in 1709 – if the current building is anything near that old it’s done very well indeed, but I suspect it is the result of a later rebuild. As you enter through the main (Lounge Bar) entrance you see the mosaic flooring featuring the inlaid name of the pub/hotel. This is the main bar area; to the left is a small lounge area with sofas and a fireplace; to the right is a small interconnecting room with a sofa and a couple of armchairs; this leads to the restaurant area. The small lounge has a fair bit of exposed brickwork, coupled with russet painted walls, and the main bar area and interconnecting snug room features some ancient looking wood panelling. I didn’t venture into the dining room, contenting myself with a pretty good ham sarny and salad (for a fairly reasonable £4.95) sitting at the bar. There were numerous prints and the like on the walls. Where I was sitting there was a framed page from The Times of 16 July 1849, including an advertisement for The Kings Arms Hotel. There is some outside seating at the front. This pub reeks of history, standing, as it does, right outside one the country’s most iconic palaces. I imagine that it is exactly the sort of pub that tourists will expect to find in a place like this. I enjoyed my visit, but it was at one of the more quiet times – at the height of the tourist season or at weekends it might be very different. But this is still the best pub in the Hampton Court area, in my opinion, and definitely worth a visit if you are in the area.