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The Paxtons Head, Knightsbridge, SW1
SW1
SW1X 7PA
Pub Type
Taylor Walker (Spirit Pubs)Reviews (Current Rating Average: 6 of 10) see review guidelines
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Just a quick pint, then I'm off left this review about The Paxtons Head
Attractive Greene King (previously Spirit then Taylor Walker) pub with an interesting facade and plenty of ornate features to admire inside with a fine lozenge-shaped island bar and central bar-back dominating the main room. Plenty of etched glass, mirrors and other decorative features all around. With four of the six handpumps in use, I found IPA, Abbot, Old Golden Hen (£5.35) and Lilley's Apples & Pears cider being poured, and the celebratory Jubilee beer 'coming next' on this long overdue revisit. Also has a smaller, plainer Hyde Away bar downstairs with a pool table and up to three real ales on handpump, and a dining room upstairs (never visited).
On 5th June 2022
- rating: 7
[User has posted 8091 recommendations about 8091 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Tris C left this review about The Paxtons Head
A first visit to this grade II-listed pub, on CAMRA’s website for having an interior of Regional Interest, where photos of the spectacular interior can be seen, though not to best effect.
So then, the pub has the heritage value in spades, but that’s the good news. This is now a GK pub with all the predictability that entails, with rather off-putting cooking smells of fried onion rings, ordered from menus on tables. There’s a downstairs bar with pool table which is advertised as a function room, but its lavs are shared with drinkers upstairs. There was sport on at least two TVs but the problem here is that lighting is low and with all the mirrors and reflective glass, it may as well be 1,000 TVs; it’s not at all restful. Customers seem to be tourists; I doubt the resident who bought the neighbouring One Hyde Park flat a few months back for £175m drinks here.
Ales: two pumps offering GK IPA, a reversed clip for Morland’s Copper Ale, Landlord ‘coming soon’ and two novelty ciders, Lilley’s Pineapple or Peach; a Guinness set me back £5.55 which is probably not too bad for the area; staff are unsurprisingly a bit uninterested.
This is one to visit for a swift half whilst doing a lap of the impressive bar, before going on to spend quality time in the Grenadier or especially the Nag’s Head.
On 28th September 2021
- rating: 6
[User has posted 1983 recommendations about 1949 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
hondo . left this review about The Paxtons Head
A better than usual Taylor Walker interior with an island bar and mirrors down 2 walls. 5 real ales and food served. Didn't visit the more formal dining area upstairs.
On 13th October 2015
- no rating submitted
[User has posted 2883 recommendations about 2820 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Nick Davies left this review about The Paxtons Head
Thanks to being in permanent shade on the north-facing side of a hellishly busy road, and surrounded by never ending construction projects, usually of stories-high blocks of millionaires' apartments this pub looks dark, dingy and uninviting. Venture inside though and you find an original Victorian gin palace virtually untouched by the ravages of time. Roger describes it perfectly well below so I won't say it all again, but you do wonder why Spirit don't make more of it - it should surely be marketed as a destination pub, on the tourist trail for all lovers of Victoriana.
Well worth a visit.
On 8th October 2011
- rating: 7
[User has posted 567 recommendations about 559 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Roger Button left this review about The Paxtons Head
Built in the mid 19th Century, the Paxton's Head is a slightly scaled down version of some of the more ornate Victorian pubs in town (the Salisbury and Red Lion in St James spring to mind). Whilst it is certainly not as elaborate, there is still juch to warrant a peek inside.
The dark interior centres on an island bar complete with frame with chessboard tiling floor surrounds, oak paneled walls, patterned glass, mirrors and moulded ceilings. How much is original is probably open to debate but it does conjure up a good idea of the richness of Victorian pubs.
Downstairs is a Sports Bar with 4 screens, a pool table and table football game. It does have its own bar but a limited selection of beers and no ale pumps. On the first floor with a separate entrance is the Off The Hook restaurant which I have not tried.
The 4 ales (across 5 hand pumps) didn’t throw up too much by way of inspired choices with a standard selection of Greene King IPA, London Pride, Youngs London Gold and Old Speckeld Hen. Prices were quite reasonable (London Gold was £3.10) especially compared to the £3.57 I paid for an Adnams at the Tattershall round the corner despite both being part of the newly branded Taylor Walker pubs owned by Punch.
Food wise, bar food is available in the pub with a typical pub grub tourist menu and main courses priced around £6-£10. I didn’t note what the presumably more formal upstairs restaurant had to offer.
Service was prompt and friendly although I could have done without being referred to as Boss all the time and the product knowledge of the staff was found wanting when a tourist requested a local beer whereby I had to intervene and steer them to a suitable choice as the barman was pretty clueless (London Pride would have been a decent guess and I may even have forgiven him for claiming London Gold as local even if it was brewed in Bedfordshire but the blind panic caused by such a simple tourist request was pretty lamentable and sadly not unexpected).
As Knightsbridge goes the Paxton's is certainly above average and is worth a look in although it does suffer from PubCo Apathy Syndrome which won’t bother the tourists but will leave the regular pub afficianado feeling a little underwhelmed by a place that could easily be so much better.
On 23rd March 2011
- rating: 6
[User has posted 1239 recommendations about 1233 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Rex Rattus left this review about The Paxtons Head
There are masses of original late Victorian (or perhaps early Edwardian) features (etched and cut glass, original wooden bar back, high Lincrusta ceiling, etc) in this impressive pub on Knightsbridge that gives the interior an olde worlde attractiveness that only genuine antiques can achieve. But that’s as far as it goes. I dislike having to ask for a top up (one shouldn’t have to of course), but the beer was so far short of the top of the glass that I felt obliged to. Having said that, it was topped up graciously. This should be a really great pub, but it looks to have had the Spirit Group corporate identity embedded into it. But they’ve retained all the original features that they have inherited – although these days I think it would be much harder to get away with the acts of vandalism that have been visited upon far too many pubs in the past.
Real ales on offer were Black Sheep Bitter; London Pride; and Deuchars IPA. Visit this pub if you like to drink surrounded by the olde worlde grandeur of a 110 or so year old setting, otherwise it’s OK, but nothing special.
On 8th April 2009
- rating: 5
[User has posted 2606 recommendations about 2520 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Philip Carter left this review about The Paxtons Head
Lots of dark wood inside, probably original fittings. Sells real ale. Food on sale all day. Has an upstairs dining area. Disable access.
On 11th April 2007
- rating: 6
[User has posted 757 recommendations about 720 pubs]