Old Nuns Head SE15

The Old Nuns Head, London SE15.

London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars updates
Southeast London: Other locations – Nunhead

Contemporary pub (Punch)
15 Nunhead Green SE15 3QQ
T 020 7639 4007 w www.theoldnunshead.co.uk f TheOldNunsHead tw theoldnunshead
Open 1200-2300 (0100 Fri-Sat). Children very welcome until 2100.
Cask beer 4 (Hogs Back, 3 often local guests) Cask Marque, Other beer 3 keg, 5 bottles.
Food Limited but imaginative seasonal menu, children’s menu, Outdoor Rear terrace, Wifi. Disabled toilet.
Mon mums’ club, Wed open mic, Thu quiz, Fri monthly comedy, beer festivals, occasional live music & DJs, classes, functions, food promotions, board games.

Nunhead, on the hilly ridge south of Peckham and New Cross, is one of London’s more tucked away suburbs, and for a while one of its poorer ones, although gentrification is slowly creeping in. Historically it had monastic connections, and its name happily derives from that of a pub, the Nuns Head (local legends linking the name to the story of a beheaded holy woman are sensational but unreliable). On John Rocque’s 1762 map you can see the pub and a scattering of cottages among green fields, clustered around Nunhead Green. The green still survives as a little strip of public space, but the pub now known as the Old Nuns Head, though on a site which has been put to this use since at least the 17^th century, is a 1930s Brewer’s Tudor affair, with a half-timbered upper floor contributing to the villagey feel of this conservation area.

The pub has been well looked after under new management since 2010, with a cosy interior making good use of warm wood panelling and fireplaces, and lots of stuff going on. Given the limitations of a Punch tie it also does well for beer, often stocking local brews from the likes of By the Horns, East London, London Fields and Sambrook’s alongside choices from the pubco’s guest beer programme sourced from, say, Batemans, Exmoor, Jennings, Mordue or Stonehenge. A handful of bottles including BrewDog, Meantime and Singha, and Staropramen and Hoegaarden on keg, widens options, while a beer festival every few months opens things up still further. The pub is also linked to the London Craft Beer Rising event.

Visitor note. The area is also noted for Nunhead Cemetery, one of London’s “Magnificent Seven” suburban cemeteries created following new laws in 1832, once derelict and now partly managed as a nature reserve; and as the former home of Brock’s fireworks factory, commemorated in the name of another pub on the green, the Pyrotechnist’s Arms.