Holloway pubs

First impressions? Well, it's ultra traditional. It retains separate lounge and bar areas. The beige/brown walls display a mixture of vaguely nautical pictures and pub bric-a-brac. Middle aged builders sup on their pints at the bar whilst discussing the price of timber. Englebert Humperdinck croons his Last Waltz on the jukebox. It's all very old school. Just like the alehouses in days of old, they don't serve food. The beer is worth mentioning - McMullens (never heard of it until now). It does exactly what it says on the tin. A solid, no frills local boozer. The bar inside mimics the curve of the elegant Victorian faade that faces the street. Ageing men seated at the bar struggle to converse over the blaring “Urban” music. After several futile attempts at communication, they give up and return to their newspapers and fags. The daughter is clearly in charge of the music in this family run establishment and I don’t think she’s quite yet grasped the musical tastes of the clientele. Light streams in through the large windows highlighting the tobacco haze and shows an absence of dust. Evidently, the family seem to be doing a good job of keeping the place clean. The beer was equally well-kept. A solid unpretentious local. Ensconced in a sidestreet off busy Holloway Road, The George is easily missed. Its a rather shabby establishment but is seemingly well-loved by the locals. Its cheap too, probably in an attempt to attract students from the local university. The beer selection is rather disappointing. I foolishly opted for a pint of Websters which was completely lifeless and tasted "earthy". Lager would have been the more sensible choice given the options available. On the plus side, it does have an atmosphere and on Thursday nights they host an "open mike" session, although its hard to imagine Simon Cowell looking for "the next big thing" here. Unfortunately no more fetish nights... The pub has changed hands and been refurbished since our visit but we hope to get back and check it out soon The no-man’s-land between Kings Cross and Holloway on the Caledonian Road constitutes a truly desolate area of London. There are no amenities; only grim housing estates and run down business premises punctuated by busy arteries whisking people to places infinitely more interesting. Very few people actually choose to come here. Most head off to Islington to the east or Camden Town to the west to get their thrills. North Road has the highest rate of car crime in the borough and is home to the notorious Market Estate with its armies of psycho teenagers in their familiar tracksuit and Burberry cap uniform. The girls are particularly scary: slicked back pony-tailed Kappa Slappas with pit bull terriers and fake gold jewellery (mmm nice). Shillibeers is quite literally an oasis in amongst this desert of delinquency. It creeps into the website solely on the grounds that it’s the only watering hole within a mile’s radius. It owes its existence to the converted bus factory next door that houses hoards of white-collar workers and students from a technical college looking for daily sustenance. As it is the only centre of life for what seems like miles, it has to meet a variety of needs. First and foremost it is a pub, but at lunchtimes a small adjoining building sells sandwiches, which can be eaten in the pub or taken away. More substantial food is served in the pub itself. On certain nights it stays open until 2am pumping out anything from 70s funk to the latest club anthems. They even hold monthly fetish nights for rubber and PVC ”enthusiasts”. As you might expect, it’s a fairly big place. There are plenty of tables for punters to eat and drink at as well as open areas for drunken cavorting. When you can actually get served at the bar, there’s a good selection of beers, wines and spirits to be had. It’s certainly not like a traditional British pub. I think it feels more American than anything else. The overriding impression is that this is a unique and very peculiar place. It could only exist here. …Or to give it its full name; The Swimmer at the Grafton Arms. This is the best pub in the area by some considerable distance. It takes a bit of finding, but its well worth seeking out. The beer selection is fantastic: real ale meets Czech lager. The food, superbly prepared by the scary-looking tattooed chef, is amazing. The tastefully restored Victorian dcor provides pleasant surroundings for all pub-going needs. My only worry is its continued survival amid the students and tobacco-touting asylum seekers of Holloway Road. At the time of the review I was the only customer and the staff didn’t want me to leave. I didn’t want to leave either. The clientele comprise a culturally mixed group of elderley men as well as students from the nearby London Metropolitan University Campus. At only 1.40 for a pint of Tetley who can blame them for being here. It's huge. The front area has enough room for a pool table with ample room to spare to stand or sit. The rear resembles Dracula's living room (or should that be undead room). Leather clad seating, exquisite gothic wooden carved panelling and a dart board peer out from the gloom. Even the big screen hanging from the ceiling is dwarfed by the cavernous vastness. Well worth a visit if you're in the area. A friend of mine in his typically un-politically-correct manner warned me that this pub would be full of psychotic lesbians and butch female screws from Holloway Prison. It was therefore with some trepidation that I decided to venture in, half expecting to be set upon by crazed women. As it turned out my fears were unfounded. My only drinking companions were other men watching the snooker on television and a friendly landlord. The pub’s interior is divided into a public bar containing a dart board and a much larger lounge accessed by following the L-shaped bar. The walls throughout are painted a lurid custard yellow colour ranging in shade from fresh custard up to week-old custard. On fine days you can sit outside on the front terrace overlooking the traffic on Camden Road. If you’re lucky you may even see a fugitive scaling the prison walls across the road. Modern, yet oddly traditional. Friendly, yet devoid of customers. The Copenhagen is seemingly full of contradictions, yet in reality it is just a friendly local pub overlooking the busy Camden Road. The lunchtime clientele was limited to myself and a bigoted old man lamenting the influx of migrants from Eastern Europe. The landlord did a convincing impression of somebody who cared what this man was saying. I was suitably impressed by the way the landlord lavished attention on the old codger and came to the conclusion that this was a man who cared about his customers. The pub itself was pleasant enough. The large bar area was subdivided into more intimate drinking havens. The volume on the telly was low level and unobtrusive. Several games machines and posters advertising lethal concoctions of booze were scattered about the place. I imagine it gets quite busy during the evenings although it was difficult to imagine it this way on our visit. Not reviewed yet.

Want to review it? Strange place also known as Tommy Flynn's. What looks from the outside like a typical Holloway Road Irish boozer is, inside, a Tardis like expanse which is expensively decked out to look...well, Im not really sure.

Always shows Arsenal matches, has some sort of weird foreign restaurant upstairs but has a pedestrian selection of booze. Does have Tayto crisps though, much better than Walkers. An attractive looking Victorian hostelry on the fringes of Holloway. Its smart exterior is partially shrouded by creeping plants and hanging baskets. The comfortable interior is easy on the eye and retains many original features. A terrace set back from the busy road at the front is flanked by lovingly cared-for plants and is a pleasant place to sit on lazy summer afternoons. The choice of beer is nothing to write home about, but what they did have was well-kept and full of flavour. Sadly, they don't serve food. Nevertheless, this is a fine local boozer and worth a visit if you happen to be in the area. Open and refurbed after a year, The Shaftesbury has had its victorian-ness put back into it, lots of etched glass and hand built wooden pew seating with the odd sofa it looks impressive, good quality food pub and great sunday lunch, it is a welcome addition to this side of the hill. Yippee It has customers, which is a major improvement on some of the other pubs in the area. Its prominent location on the corner of Brecknock and Camden Roads is one possible explanation, the beer priced at 1.40 for a pint of Toby is another. The traditional square bar surrounded by the tobacco yellow and pastel red hues of the rest of the pub is positively buzzing with punters clamouring for a drink. Like most pubs outside central London, it has its own legion of old men who queue outside the doors at 10:45am and have to be thrown out after last orders. The difference with The Unicorn is that it seems to attract a much wider cross section of the local population and most of them appear to be sane. It has all the ingredients of a good pub: decent (and reasonably priced) booze, pub games, music and telly (volume down). The place appears to be a real centre for the local community, although outsiders are equally welcome here. I like this place.

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