London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars updates
Southeast London: Other locations – Lewisham
Ravensbourne Arms, London SE13
Contemporary pub (Antic)
323 Lewisham High Street SE13 6NR
T 020 8613 7070 w www.ravensbournearms.com f ravensbourne.arms tw RavensbourneArm
Open 1600 (1200 Sat-Sun)-2330 (0030 Wed-Thu, 0130 Fri-Sat, 2230 Sun). Children welcome until 2100.
Cask beer 5 (Adnams, 4 sometimes unusual guests) Cask Marque, Other beer 5 keg, 12+ bottles, Also 18 wines, a few malts.
Food Gastro/enhanced pub grub menu, Outdoor Front terrace, beer garden, Wifi. Disabled toilet.
Table football, bar billiards, darts, board games W quiz, monthly live music.
This big roadside pub near Lewisham University Hospital is another successful makeover by the enterprising Antic group. Until Spring 2011 it was known as the Coach and Horses and had, as one contributor to a pub rating website put it, “a slight air of menace”. Antic have revealed the original wood fittings and parquet floor, and added their usual junk like deer heads, cutlery displays and old radios to create a big bright space with a sort of off-kilter hunting lodge feel. Several Adnams beers are usually on, and guests might come from Dark Star, Purity, Redemption, Sambrook’s, White Horse and the like.
BrewDog Punk IPA and two Meantime beers cheer up the keg choice, with a range of Timmermans (sweetened) fruit lambics beside Budvar, Goose Island and Little Creatures in the fridge. Food ranges from trendy retro bar snacks like pork and pickle pie and warm Scotch eggs to pan fried vegetarian gnocchi, chicken parcels with herbed pork stuffing or whole red snapper. Other friendly touches include a community noticeboard and free dog biscuits for four legged companions. Something of a shining star in an area short on good pubs.
Visitor note. The pub is named after Thames tributary the Ravensbourne, which runs through Ladywell Fields nearby.
National Rail Ladywell, Lewisham DLR Lewisham Bus Ladywell Leisure Centre (numerous Lewisham) Cycling NCN 21, link to LCN+ 22 Walking Waterlink Way, Lewisham Promenade
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