The Great Northern Railway Tavern, Hornsey, N8

Pub SignMan left this review about The Great Northern Railway Tavern

This is a large, ornate Fullers pub located on a fairly busy road, about a five minute walk from Hornsey station. The pub looks pretty impressive on approach, thanks to a well looked after façade, and some of this grandeur has been retained inside as well. Entering through the corner door, this wasn’t initially all that apparent, as you find yourself in an open plan room with modern floor tiles, some basic tables and chairs around the perimeter and a banquette to the rear, but nothing too interesting to get excited about. This room felt like a bit of an overspill area and was definitely the last part of the pub to fill up on our Thursday evening visit. On closer inspection there are a lot of large plain windows around two sides of this room, but a couple of old etched glass panes have been retained, including in the old Jug and Bottle doorway, now disused. This door also has a very decorative frame and there’s a nice partitioning screen close to it with amazing etched glass, floral design panes. The servery extends into this space from the left-hand main bar area, with a long sweeping counter with curved ends passing through a small, snug-like space with enough room for a single table. The bar back has some attractive arched mirrors along the top and a decorative woodwork frieze below and lots of potted plants for colour. There’s limited seating opposite the bar, down the left-hand wall, but the pub opens out into a very nice room to the rear, which boasts plenty more tables and chairs in a nicely decorated space with a fireplace and pleasant skylight.
On the bar, three operational handpulls were dispensing Fullers London pride, Cloudwater Easy Pale and something from Siren. The Easy Pale was in reasonable condition, but cask seems to play second fiddle to the pub’s craft keg range, which appeared to be extensive, running across two long banks of taps. We visited for a beer tasting session with The Kernal brewery, which was hosted in the back room and included six beers from the brewery’s tap takeover. The event was hosted by someone from the brewery, but the real star was the barmaid, who brought all our beers out on time and also plied us with an excellent selection of cheeses which we all munched through with scant regard for how well they paired with the beer!
Fullers have got a few pubs around the capital that seem to have this heavy focus on craft beer and a limited selection of their own products, and on the whole, I quite enjoy these venues. This place was no exception, with excellent service, some fine traditional features, a few decent ale options and an extensive craft keg range marking it out as somewhere worth investigating.

Date of visit – 9th November 2023

On 8^th January 2024 - rating: 7
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