The Hanbury, Islington, N1

Official site of The Hanbury Arms - www.thehanbury.co.uk

Official site of The Hanbury Arms - www.thehanbury.co.uk

A street corner pub which doesn't seem to have gentrified.Internally there is a lot of wood panelling and traditional furniture.There are two handpumps but tucked away from the main display of multinational kegs,and not in the serving area .It felt like they were an afterthought ,only one was operational serving an indifferent Hackney Luppolo Pale.The Six Nations was on and there was a boisterous crowd in,which may have coloured the visit,but I dont feel I will be rushing back.

A basic one roomed corner pub, two hand pumps with two Portobello beers on , APA and Westway Pale,a fairly un remakable interior with the main feature of note being the open Pizza oven behind the bar. Not a particularly good pub, or bad come to that.

This place still specialises in pizze, with a large chalkboard on the back detailing the toppings on offer. None of us had ever seen a potato topping for a pizza before, and we also thought the octopus topping a bit unusual. There weren't any prices displayed, which I thought a little odd. But we weren't eating so this was all just academic interest. They did have couple of ales on - Hackney Luppulo and Two Cocks Viscount. The latter was a 5.6% brew and as we weren't quite ready for that ABV we all went for the Luppulo which turned out to be a light coloured hoppy ale. It went down quite nicely though. The exterior still has the classic old Charrington signage, but the windows are all plain, rather than the traditional green banded glazing that was the Charrington trademark. The bar back inside still has the illuminated Charrington signage, and the walls are all covered with some very nice natural wood coloured fielded panelling. But obviously all the internal divisions have long gone. One of our company, who is an expert on such things, found the free jukebox wanting as it contained no vinyl, being a digital contraption presumably. Another less usually seen bit of machinery here is the pinball (the Elvis game). Not free unfortunately, and the left flipper wasn't working properly. The furnishings are a bit upmarket with a few sofas and solid wooden tables with normal seating - including recycled schoolchairs. We sat near the log fire around on the right, but it was still very cold in here as the logs hadn't really got going. But it was a desperately cold day and arriving just after opening time it was probably too early for the place to have heated up. But at another time I reckon it would be a nice enough place to spend an hour or two.