London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars updates
Central London – Covent Garden
Traditional pub, regional heritage pub
91 Strand WC2R 0DW
T (020) 7379 9883 W www.nicholsonspubs.co.uk/thecoalholestrandlondon
Open 1000-2300 (2400 Fri-Sat). Children welcome until 1900, later if eating in wine bar
Cask beer 8-10 (Fuller’s, Sharps, St Austell, Nicholson’s guests) Cask Marque, Other beer 3 keg, 4-5 bottles, Also wines
Food Nicholson’s breakfasts and pub grub
Occasional meet the brewer events
Coal Hole, London WC2
Originally a palace owned by the Counts of Savoy (Savoie in France) stood on the site of today’s Savoy complex on the Strand. In 1881 Richard D’Oyly Carte built a theatre here to showcase the comic operas of W S Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, adjoined eight years later by London’s first true luxury hotel. The short entrance drive holds the distinction of being the only road in London where traffic keeps right. The collection of buildings includes this intriguing pub and wine cellar, though the folk histories associated with it are rather inaccurate. It was never the coal cellar for the hotel, nor was it the place where carousing actor Edmund Kean (1789-1833), who often performed at the nearby Lyceum, founded his drinking club The Wolves. Kean’s club was based at an earlier, and rather disreputable, pub and music hall called the Coal Hole, slightly to the east in Fountain Court, demolished in 1880. This likely got its name from an 18th century landlord known as the Singing Collier. The present pub was purpose built in 1904 and originally known as the Strand Wine Lodge – you can still just see this name over the doors and it’s echoed in the monogram ‘SWL’ which is designed into the leaded windows. A vinous theme dominates much of the sumptuous interior, a riotous fusion of mock-Tudor, neo-classical and art nouveau designed by architect T E Collcutt. Bunches of grapes feature in the elaborate terracotta fireplace and are carried by young ladies in bas relief on friezes high up on the walls. But the old pub name eventually came back to haunt the new place.
Currently it’s one of the Central London Nicholson’s pubs that takes particular advantage of the chain’s seasonal guest list. Besides standard London Pride, Doom Bar and Tribute you might find beers from Batemans, Brain’s or Thornbridge. There are keg taps for Suffolk Blonde lager (brewed by Shepherd Neame), Franziskaner and Pilsner Urquell, and a few bottles from Budvar, Duvel and Sierra Nevada. Food is the regular Nicholson’s pub grub menu.
Insider tip. Even though there’s a more limited beer range, do look at the wine cellar downstairs, an attractive wood panelled space with a door out onto the alleyway at the back of the Savoy complex. The steep drop reminds us that before the Victoria Embankment was built, this was the actual riverbank.
National Rail Charing Cross Underground Charing Cross, Covent Garden Cycling LCN+6, links to NCN4 Walking Thames Path, link to Jubilee Walkway
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