The Railway Bell, Hampton

Pub SignMan left this review about The Railway Bell

Just a minute or two down the road from Hampton station, this is a traditional, two room pub with a bit of a stripped out, modernised interior. You enter via a decent sized front patio garden with lots of bench and chair seating and some limited cover, eventually reaching a small porch space with a compact seating area straight in front and the main bar through a door to the right. The bar area is in a bare boarded room with dark green and white lincrustra wall coverings, a white dado and a few old light fixtures dotted around. The servery is to the rear and has a rather dull panelled counter whilst the bar back has mostly been ripped out so that you can see clearly through to the other room. Banquettes run around the front wall, including in the bay window space, with tables and chairs plus a few low stools to the right, where the room extends a short way back. There's a modern fireplace back here, beneath an enigmatic empty picture frame and a fair few local photos dot the walls whilst a TV was showing a muted rolling news channel. For all of that, the pub still feels a little bland, and the plain white walls of the second room, which is also bare boarded and full of basic tables and chairs, only add to this feeling, despite a few paintings and an unused TV screen trying to break up the monotony. Music was playing very quietly in background and a sign on the front door said "Home Fans Only" on Hampton & Richmond match days, but most of the punters seemed to be neutrals or fans of the away side when I visited an hour or so prior to kick off.
This pub often pops up in the Good Beer Guide and they had four cask ales on the go when I arrived - Twickenham Naked Ladies and Strange Brew, Sharps Doom Bar and Roosters YPA (£5.00). I took a pint of the latter from a taciturn barmaid, and found it to be a very thin beer and lacking flavour and mouthfeel. The place was doing a modest trade, mainly from football fans, and was very quiet compared to the much livelier Worlds End just down the road.
I had quite high hopes for this place and thought it would be the pick of the pubs I had targeted for the day, but in the end, it wasn't even the best pub in Hampton, leaving me cold with its sterile decor and subpar beer. Maybe I caught it at the wrong time or chose the wrong beer, but this ended up being a moderately enjoyable visit that I'm unlikely to repeat in a hurry.

Date of visit - 14th October 2023

On 5^th January 2024 - rating: 6
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