The Shaftesbury, Richmond

Young's pub interior as described below. 4 real ales and food served.

This pub had on Truman's Blindside, Twickenham Grandstand, and the Young's pairing of Bitter (£1.95 a half) and Special. The only menus on the tables were for Christmas specials, but a chalkboard on the wall advertised a "prime British beef cheeseburger" for £13.50, plus a vegetable and nut burger; wild boar sausags & mash; and fish & chips all at £12.50. It looks as if the right hand side of the pub is the original building, which seems to have been expanded into the adjacent building. It's now a very made-over Young's pub. It's bare boarded of course, with much older looking boards in the original side of the pub. A lot of the wood panelling on the walls has been stripped bare, and it has to be said is now in a very distressed state, leaving it looking unfinished to an extent that would not be out of place in an Antic pub. There's a mix of furnishings, but mainly normal tables and chairs, at least a couple of very high backed armchairs, and a massive (6-seater) sofa is by the window accompanied by an enormous (12-seater) tables which was set for diners. I assume they must have had a booking for a large group. There were some other tables laid for diners, but it seemed that most seating was available for drinkers. There was a sign hanging from the ceiling pointing to a "secret garden" at the back - well, it's not going to stay a secret for long with that sign there is it? There were TVs, with signs saying that rugby World Cup games are being shown, but it doesn't really look like a "TV watcher's" pub, but I'm sure that the Rugby World Cup is a very special event in this part of the world. Being a Young's pub it's obviously not traditional in appearance, but it's still a decent enough place even if a bit uber trendy looking. There are bottles on dividing shelves, as well as discreet (mainly rugby themed) prints on the walls. It's not really the sort of place that looks ideal for a beer drinking session, but on the plus side it did have a couple of guest ales on.

Clearly two buildings knocked together form this pub, a large single room with an off-centre horseshoe bar, painted blue. Wood flooring, ceilings part boarded, part panelled, some of the lower wall wooden panelling has been stripped back to bare wood which in all honesty really doesn't look great. Very mixed seating, thankfully no high tables but various seating types including bucket chairs and a bizarrely high wing back armchair as tall as a man. Some exposed brickwork, there is a food servery open to the pub at one end with a tiled frontage. The place feels and looks foody, several tables were reserved even at 2pm in the afternoon, the Shaftesbury cheese burger and chips is £12, venison steak pie, mash and seasonal veg £14. There were home made sausage rolls on the bar for two quid a pop. The service was unusual, the barmaid had to take a break from ironing napkins in the corner to come and serve me but she was friendly and asked me if I wanted a taster. Youngs Bitter, Special and Wandle Pumphouse Pale Ale, steep at £4.19, unfortunately the Portabello VPA was reverse clipped. A reasonable music soundtrack was playing, one TV was off, the other showed a news programme muted. Outdoor seating to the rear with gaily coloured furniture. The overall feel was of a pub trying to be something, not sure what, upmarket, trendy maybe? Whatever it is, there are too many clashing styles, it didn't work for me but most importantly the beer was fine if overpriced.

The Shaftsbury Arms is on the very busy kew road in the centre of Richmond. This is a typical town pub and once inside the pub was fairly smart and it had been opened out into one largish room. This pub is a Youngs tied house and there were two real ales on the bar i had a drink of Youngs bitter and this was a decent drink the other beer was Youngs Special. This was the last pub on my crawl and it was fairly close the Richmond train station. Pub visited 14/12/2002

Randomness Guide to London - The Shaftesbury entry

Randomness Guide to London - The Shaftesbury entry