The Gowlett, Peckham Rye, SE15

If the Peckham/Nunhead area is now considered to be a worthy destination for those looking for decent ale, then the Gowlett should probably be viewed as one of the area's pioneers, having been supplying locals with consistently good beers for a number of years now - long before the craft beer and microbrewery explosion. Reaching the pub requires a bit of a trek through the back streets from Peckham Rye station, but it's worth the effort. The pub itself is a sizeable street corner affair with a large, opened out room centred around a prominent servery. The room is bare boarded, with the L-shaped servery directly opposite the main entrance. Some button backed sofas fill the space along the front walls underneath the large windows and serve a series of low, slightly impractical tables. To the right is a pleasant dark wood panelled space with pump clips running above the panels and a 'Peckham Soul' t-shirt framed on one wall. There is plenty of standard table and chair seating here as well as a couple more sofas. To the rear is an area set aside for bar billiards and a cabinet displaying some signed footballs. The servery has a dark wood counter and an unusual fully mirrored bar back. Over on the left hand side of the pub, some additional seating can be found and there was a TV screen showing muted FA Cup football, with a large pull down screen near the entrance also being used for this purpose. Music played quietly throughout my visit and food seemed to be available in pizza form only, but there was a converted double decker bus parked outside that also seemed to offer some kind of catering facility, although it appeared to be non-operational on this particular evening. Some bench seating can be found outside the front of the pub, but I didn't notice any rear beer garden. A row of handpulls near the corner of the bar offered Belleville Commonside Pale, Brockley Golden, Harvey's Sussex Best, Sharps Doom Bar and Wharfebank Kraken, whilst the keg taps featured the likes of Leffe, Hoegaarden and Meantime Pale. I tried a pint of the Commonside Pale, which was in good nick and served by a slightly overworked barmaid on a busy Friday evening. I thought this was a good community pub and a pleasant enough place to spend some time enjoying a few good pints. The place was too busy for me to properly settle down on this particular visit, but I nevertheless thought that the warm ambiance and traditional décor make this a very good pub and the next time I'm back in Peckham, I suspect this will be my first port of call.

Like its sister act, Old Nun's Head, the furniture here is proper wood tables/chairs one side, & ludicrously low tables and sofas opposite bar, pool table squashed in beyond. You've got to be sceptical about a pub which gets more acclaim for the pizzas than the beers but, in fairness, there were four handpumps (3 on?) and the Harveys was good 'til it ran out and the Adnams Explorer was also good, although both £3.10. Furthermore those pizzas did look pretty good. Not my kind of place, but I've been to a lot worse and is evidently popular locally with a friendly 20-30-something vibe.

The Gowlett is a back street corner pub that is in a very quiet area of Peckham Rye. I had to wait for the pub to open at 12,once inside the main bar is L shaped with bare boards,there were a couple of leather settees to the front which looked very tatty,but this is London so they are probably meant to look like that,there was a DJ rig to the front left and a real fire roaring away to the rear left,the right side of the room is carpeted and had comfy leather bench seating with small stolls and chairs,there was also a bar billiards table and piano in this area. There were four real ales on the bar,i had a drink of Harveys bitter £1.80 a half which had just been pulled off,this was a really nice well kept beer,the other beers were Adnams bitter and Broadside plus Otter bright. There was some modern type background music playing. I quite took to this pub and would happily have a good session here. Pub visited 25/1/2014

There were four real ales on during my visit – London Pride; Deuchars IPA; Adnam’s Broadside; and Wadworth’s 6X. The 6X was excellent, and at £3.10 a pint not too unreasonably priced. There were also a couple of pumps that were unclipped. The food on offer was almost entirely pizzas, at £8 a throw, and clearly freshly made and baked. But you can buy slices at £1.50 a time, and a couple of these made an excellent and tasty snack. There is a horseshoe shaped bar counter, with the drinking area obviously wrapped around it. The corner door brings you into what I would regard as the main bar. The floor here is bare boarded, with what are undoubtedly original boards, still with the boarded (presumably unused?) trapdoor to the cellar unusually in front of the bar counter. But maybe the bar counter has been moved at some stage. In the corner there is a DJ style music system; there’s a couple of sofas with a low table with an unusual glass panelled surface. To the right of the bar counter there is a separate drinking area that would have been a separate room at some stage. This area is carpeted, with some normal tables and chairs, and dark brown plastic upholstered banquettes and small stools. All the tables had on them those small candles. This pub looks for all the world like a failed attempt to move upmarket. Changing the name from “The Gowlett Arms” to just “the gowlett”, and not even the more grammatically correct “The Gowlett” (whatever a gowlett might happen to be), looks to be evidence of pretentiousness to me. For a pub that was apparently the CAMRA South-East pub of the year for 2005/06, I was expecting more. But it did have four ales on, so there are some pluses, but even so I don’t think I would bother to seek it out.

Randomness Guide to London - Gowlett entry

Randomness Guide to London - Gowlett entry