The William Butler Yeats, N4

Dating from 1871, this was originally the Duke of Edinburgh, the current name dating from 2013. I don’t know what association if any Yeats had with the area, but I walked past Yeats’ house in Primrose Hill on the way home, where later Sylvia Plath lived and gassed herself. The floor is boarded, with the bar at left, with a field panelled grey front and no back as such, just a mass of shiny white tiles. Walls to the windows are painted dark grey, the remainder a shade I’d call ‘wasabi’, with a white ceiling. Along with window drinking ledges, furniture is conventional and mixed, with décor in the form of nothing to the main part of the pub apart from an odd Yeats’ commemorative mirror. All the décor was crammed into the small rear section, prints and plenty of knickknacks along with a bare brick fireplace; it looks like a different pub. What little light is available comes from brass candle chandeliers. Customers were few, certainly compared to the neighbouring Plimsoll and were young professional types. There’s no real ale here, me having to make do with a half of Siren Yu Lu at £3.50, served in a stupid glass which resembled an Apollo command module, by a monosyllabic barman. This is really rather a depressing pub, devoid of character and real ale. The vastly superior Plimsoll is around the corner, is lavished with the former, but equally not the latter.

Official site of The WB Yeats - www.thewbyeatsn4.co.uk

Official site of The WB Yeats - www.thewbyeatsn4.co.uk