Mansion House - Oakham Splits The Difference

Oakham finally got their licence for The Mansion House on Kennington Park Road, but they had to concede some of their original application wish list during the licensing sub-committee hearing, and there's a high level of assurance being loaded on the operator in order to assuage residents.

Local middle-class busybodies, The Kennington Association (KA), presented evidence indicating the late licence was out of step with all other local pubs and bars, and it transpired that there is no proper licence for street drinking or dining, meaning the outside dining/drinking and accompanying music has gone. Oaka didn't contest the assertion that street drinkers from Vauxhall were migrating to Kennington as a result of street clean-up work in the former neighbourhood, so stringent controls on late-night access and noise are also a part of their licence.

The biggest cause of uproar, the proposed opening hours, have been constrained to those in force the last time the pub was licensed, in 2008. So, from Sunday to Wednesday the pub will have to close at 12.30am, and they'll get an hour extra at weekends, to 1.30am.

There are some other snippets of info about the new place. This made me grin...

Off sales of alcohol were being sought in order that sealed 3-4 pint jugs of real ales could be sold to members of Camra

So, if there's any street drinking problems around Kennington Park Road, it'll be down to Kevin. At least, according to the KA. I wonder if buyers will have to produce their membership card to get a jug?

Sadly, the pub will be family-friendly, so I expect there'll be occasions when the place is filled with the grizzling of brats off the leash. I remember The Florence hosting a yummy mummies' coffee morning during one visit. Strollers and buggies in a pub is just wrong.

Apparently the refurb is almost complete, though you'd never know it from the outside, so at last, a decent destination pub in Kennington.

The full minutes of the meeting are here.

Oakham In Kennington: Licence Application Decision This Week

In the last gripping instalment, Lambeth Council had put the Mansion House licence application out for consultation, with the local scuttlebutt revealing public nuisance concerns which could delay opening.

The licensing sub-committee will be considering the application from OAKA on Wednesday of this coming week, with 27 representations dealing with public nuisance to consider, including one with 12 signatories from the Guinness Trust estate across Kennington Park Road. The local Police Licensing Team have also made representation on similar grounds.

I had a chat with John, who manages the Antic-operated Old Red Lion next door, and he appeared unfazed by the likely craft beer competition. His licence is 9 to 12 but weeknight closing is 11pm, and he thought OAKA might get a 1am finish at weekends, which he said would suit him as he would be able to close on time.

In the meantime, the Mansion House is still a building site, so if they are refused a licence this time around, I don't suppose there'll be a problem with loss of trade.

I'll update this post after Wednesday's meeting, once decision is made public.

Oakham In Kennington: More News...

It's been a couple of months since I wrote anything - life intrudes. The last thing I blogged about is the next, and it concerns the new Oakham pub in Kennington.

I contacted Oakham, who told me that their pubs are actually operated by a sister business, the Oaka Group. Oaka never got back to me with any info about opening etc. I wasn't asking for anything confidential - after all, there's a ten foot banner on the hoarding outside the building site that will eventually reveal, chrysalis-like, their pub. However, I did uncover a weird quirk which suggests that Oakham won't directly supply their pub. Instead, the lovely beer will come via Borough market's Utobeer.

Then I saw that their licence application to Lambeth Council had gone in. It appears as if the pub name will remain as The Mansion House, and that they are asking for a late licence to 4am. The offer will be real ale with pan-Asian cuisine and a range of entertainment, including dancing, film shows, live and piped music. They intend to have pavement seating as well.

My council insider said that some misgivings had already been expressed over the late licence, which could delay the application. This bit of Kennington has the tube station, but you need to walk 10 minutes towards the river to get to what would be the town centre, so it's possible the council would consider a 4am licence in a mostly residential part of the neighbourhood to be too much. I don't know what time Antic's Old Red Lion are licenced until, but their latest closing time is midnight. I'll keep my ear to the ground.

In the meantime, there's no sign of work being completed, so the May opening doesn't look likely right now.

Update: Neighbourhood blogger Lurking About SE11 has also picked up on the story. He notes a previous attempt to get late opening in a pub on Kennington Cross fell to opposition from locals. Lurking's call to action might be a bit too late (deadline for representations closed yesterday), but this one may run a while.

Oakaly Doakaly!

Back in 2010, when I was wandering around my home patch of Kennington in South London investigating the beer, I noted the old Mansion House pub on Kennington Park Road. Talk was Oakham had taken it and it was to be named OAKA.

Well, almost two years on, and the first Oakham pub in London is imminent. The old pub has been taken back to facade so flats can be built over the bar, and last week a banner appeared on the hoarding...

Oakham's website doesn't seem to have been updated for a while, so there's no info on there. I don't know exactly when 'soon' is, or whether the pub will still be called OAKA. I do know that a pub like this is great news for Kennington. It'll bring new business into the area - the pub itself is right on top of Kennington tube and on several bus routes - and hopefully encourage some of the lazy pubs on Kennington Cross to up their game. I'll be interested to see how it affects the Antic pub next door. The Old Red Lion appears to have upped their game in terms of beer - I saw Dark Star stuff being delivered there a month or so back.

I've asked Oakham for more info, which I'll share on here.

Cask Report: The Kennington View Pt. 2

In the first part of this article, I set the scene and wrote about some of the pubs located around Kennington Cross. Thanks to local blogger The SE11 Lurker for linking to part 1. If you're a Kennington resident and found your way here via his blog, I'm interested in getting your non-'beer geek' perspective on the local pubs - the beer (especially handpulled cask beer), the prices, the clientele. For this you have my grateful thanks.

To kick off this part then, it's on with the visits.

The Pilgrim (left) and I go back a ways. This was my local through much of the 80's and early 90's after I came back from Germany, the guv'nor being quite tolerant of things like having a chorus line doing 'New York, New York' with their trousers around their ankles at last orders, or filing in on a busy Friday night with underwear being worn on the outside. Those things create a bond. It was a Courage house for years, and was the first pub in which I started to regularly drink cask.

These days, the pub has a very young feel with friendly hipster bar staff, and the two beer engines look a bit out of place. I noticed the large fridge had several bottles of ale (sorry Martyn) though. Perhaps Da Kidz prefer their top fermented beer from bottles. Only one cask beer was on, Deuchars IPA. Again, it was in mediocre form. A couple of older drinkers sitting at a table supping pints of lager (the working man's pint says The Pub Curmudgeon, and I agree) looked out of place.

The original landlord of The Pilgrim stayed in the area, taking over the nearby backstreet boozer The Duchy Arms (right), and he's still there. This is a family-run pub, rare these days. Those working-class drinkers I was looking for drink in here, though there's some lunchtime office worker trade too. This place has been a sometime local for me in the past, but I've usually steered clear of the cask offering. The pub used to have two beer engines with Adnams and a guest, and last time I popped in it had the worst Rosey Nosey I've ever tried. Pure vinegar. These days The Duchy has three beer engines, and my half of Wye Valley HPA was pretty good, in fact apart from the Late Red, the most drinkable beer I had on the day. Pricewise, it was just under £3 for a pint.

The next stop is also a blue-collar pub, The Ship (left). Not a pub I ever frequented much, it provided a base for Peckham RL club many years ago. Despite sitting amidst terraces of million pound townhouses, it's tended to draw custom mostly from the local housing estates. A couple of beer engines, but only one with beer, this time Courage Best. It was in pretty poor shape, though much cheaper than in the more upmarket pubs.

I went by a little oddity, The Royal Oak (right) in Fitzalan Street. It's like the 80's never happened. Note the old Youngers' sign on the wall. The old guv'nor (now sadly passed on, I believe) used to run a Rolls Royce, which he parked outside the pub. Hours were whatever he felt like, he'd pay you to play the jukebox and would buy the whole pub a round. Cask beer? Not a chance. This place gets customers from the nearby estates, and probably always will. Time might have stopped for some of them, as well...

If Kennington Cross is the town centre, Kennington Park Road near Kennington underground station is the town end. More nice houses, Guinness Trust flats and a couple of large estates, very little in the way of shops and two pubs right next to one another, unfortunately on the wrong side of the underground to appeal to thirsty travellers. I say two, only one is actually trading. That's the Old Red Lion. This was a geezers' pub, all keg and big-screen sports. I didn't know it had changed hands since the Grade II listed facade always made it impossible to tell if the place was open or shut, but since earlier this year it has been part of the Antic Pub Co. This, alone of all the pubs I visited, doesn't try to attract any lunchtime trade during the week, with opening hours from 4pm to midnight. The interior has been remodelled extensively, creating a curiously dissonant effect setting mock tudor against 60's modern furniture. There are 6 beer engines. Only one was dispensing beer, Purity Ubu being sold from a tap with a parcel tag instead of a pump clip. On the other side of the island bar, a Doom Bar clip was turned around. £1.60 for a half which was OK.

On the left of the picture you'll see The Mansion House. So what? you'll say. The bloke who owns The Hermit's Cave in Camberwell used to have it, sold out to Shepherd Neame who spent a fortune on a new kitchen but couldn't make any money, and it's been closed since. It's of interest because it would have been a genuine destination pub in Kennington. If you ever heard talk of Oakham Ales opening a London tap to be called 'OAKA', this was it. They even gave out free pint vouchers at GBBF a few years back. I don't know why it didn't come off, but Kennington still sits and waits for a genuine decent beer venue. Footfall might pick up on this side of 'town' when a new Tesco's opens next door to The Old Red Lion.

That's all the pubs. Well, pretty much. I left a couple out, and there's the many that have disappeared over the years - The Alderman, The Rising Sun and Court Tavern, lost to residential use; The Cricketers and Horse & Groom near Newington Butts, The Giraffe, The Carpenters Arms, all closed. The Cock Tavern in Kennington Road is now South London Pacific, a cocktail and cabaret club.

Conclusions? Well, there's this idea of the 'community pub'. I'm not sure which of these is a 'community pub'. Possibly all of them are since they are clearly targeting different markets in the area. Thirty years ago, most of them were selling to a working-class clientele which during the week was swollen by workers, with regular lunchtime trade Mondays to Fridays. These days Kennington is much more socially-mixed, with almost all of the newer residents being squarely in the crosshairs of the Cask Report's ideal drinker profile. Several of the pubs have mutated (evolved?) into gastro and food-led establishments to service their business, and the neighbourhood has more dining out and bar/bistro type places competing for that business as well. Only The Royal Oak on my tour is wet-led.

Cask presence? All of the pubs that used to ignore cask beer now sell it, and what's more, most sell it at what to me is a premium. The 'town centre' pubs have already priced the working-class drinker out of the area. Prices were between £3.30 and £3.40 a pint. Compare that to specialist beer venues like Cask (£3.35) and The Rake (£3.10), and noted real ale venues like The Harp (£3.10). The two pubs which attract a more blue-collar clientele were the exception - The Duchy Arms and The Ship were both £3 or less, and I'd assume they have relatively lower prices for other drinks.

The beer. There were some usual suspects, hardly anything micro. Taylor's Landlord and Sharp's Doom Bar turned up regularly. Neame has their own beers on the bar at The Prince of Wales, and Young's, Black Sheep and Bombardier were about. Most of the pubs are either free houses or part of small pubcos, but all played safe with brands which might be familiar to cask drinkers. Most of what I had was in average shape. The Courage Best from The Ship and Doom Bar in the Tommyfield was clearly on the way out and shouldn't have been on sale.

That brings me to the matter of beer quality. Judging by what I found, this is a substantial hurdle. The only beer I tried in really good form was in The Prince of Wales, a tied house. The Cask Report suggests the ABC1 cask ale consumer is a fickle one. Unless their cask experience is routinely good, they'll turn their backs on it. The Report suggests cask beer is some kind of shorthand for craft offerings to a receptive audience who are tightening their belts but will still spend on quality. Curmudgeon does an excellent job of deconstructing premiumisation here. I don't know how the manager of The Tommyfield (the only clear 'gastro' venue trading on local provenance) sets about quality control in his cellar and among his punters. I don't know what his company's position on having cask on the bar is, except to wonder that the atmos they're striving to create might be undone the first time a customer spits out the pint of near-vinegar they just sipped.

Can you get away with premium pricing and a 'craft' proposition if the beer is routinely in poor form? Which way do you turn when sales drop off? Do these places provide suitable training for their staff? Do any of the pubs offer samples and tastings to customers? Of all the pubs I visited, only The Duchy Arms is a member of Cask Marque. While I hear mixed messages from the trade about their value, membership is at least a pointer to some kind of commitment to keeping and selling cask beer in good condition. Maybe the 'Guardian-reader' pubs don't expect to sell much, or rely on the ignorance of their customers to get away with beer in poor form. The two pubs with a decent lunchtime crowd in, were the two pubs with cask in drinkable condition, though I didn't see anybody else drinking it after I left The Prince Of Wales.

This is all anecdotal. I didn't rigorously sample every cask beer in every pub. I didn't check temperature, or try to find out how much each place sells, the proportion of wet sales, or the prices of keg alternatives. I didn't ask the pub operators for a comment about their commitment to cask beer. But taking the long view, having some historical knowledge of many of these pubs, it seems clear that Kennington does, in fact, reflect some of the good and, especially, the bad of what the Cask Report has captured and concluded. For me, I'll still be on the bus outta there when I'm after a decent pint...

Cask Report: A London Case Study?

Probably not, actually. But I've been musing on some of the commentary which followed the publication of the latest Report. Target markets for cask, premium pricing, exclusion of non-cask consumers, have all been fermenting in my noggin. To test some of these points, I thought I'd have a stroll around my neighbourhood, and see what's what in the local pubs.

I live in Kennington in South London. Really it's Central London but when you live south of the river, you're never 'central'. Kennington is like a commuter suburb. Not much in the way of local commerce or light industry any more, residents mostly work away from the area by day. Large local employers like James Burroughs (Beefeater Gin) and Naafi are long-gone. These days, estate agencies are prominent. They used to say Kennington was known for churches and pubs. I don't think too many churches have disappeared over the years, but a lot of the pubs have. Those that are left get some lunchtime trade, but tend to be busiest in the evenings.

Much of Kennington is owned by the Duchy of Cornwall. Head up Kennington Lane from Vauxhall, and most of the housing on the left-hand side of the road is former Duchy estate workers' housing. MP's have had flats and houses here for as long as I've lived here, and there are also some very large council housing estates, so Kennington is quite a socially-mixed area these days. That's because in the late 80's, huge amounts of the Duchy-owned housing were put on the market. Though some of the new influx were transients, generally, they've stayed and consequently the demographic in Kennington is much more upper-middle class and professional. The type of open-minded, adventurous, young ABC1's the Cask Report talks about reaching out to.

It's had an effect. Kennington went a couple of decades without a supermarket until Tesco opened up in 2000. Dining out is a lot better. Boris has put huge numbers of his Bikes in the neighbourhood. And there are now local associations and fora, and an annual 'Village Fete' and boules (or bocce - I don't know the difference) in Cleaver Square. Amusingly (to me, anyway), when Transport For London decided Kennington Lane was the southeastern boundary of the congestion charge zone, the more well-to-do residents, horrified by the prospect of having to pay to take little Jocasta and Guido to school in Westminster or wherever, tried to stymie the plans. Cue gatherings with nibbles, all very genteel, all very Kennington.

I mentioned earlier that a lot of pubs have gone. In 1980 you could have gone from Vauxhall Street to Newington Butts and, without leaving the two main roads leading there (Kennington Lane and Kennington Park Road) very far, visit 26 pubs. Today, I think you'd be lucky to find ten. Now, I'm not one for drinking locally. I like Zeitgeist in Black Prince Road but my beer geekiness means I tend to leave the area for a pint, and that's been the case for some years. We've never had any really good pubs, but recently I've become aware that some have changed hands or changed their 'offering'. With Kennington also being a different place these days, I wondered how much the pubs had changed. Did they have cask? Did the locals still use the pubs? What was pricing like? Thus, I ventured forth to have a look...

Since I've babbled on to set the scene, I'll do the pubs in two parts. This bit will deal with the pubs around what is recognised as the 'town centre' at Kennington Cross. Our first stop is The Prince Of Wales in Cleaver Square. In the 80's this was a Courage house and had a reputation as a bit of a villains' pub. I remember they did sell cask, though. The story goes that residents got fed up with late-night noise and police vans circling the Square looking for 'faces', and got Courage to close it. Greene King had it for a bit, and now it's a Shepherd Neame pub, In fact, a plaque says it won Best Cellar for 2009. A compact space, it's clearly aimed at dining punters - where there used to be a jukebox, a small dining area has been created. I had a pint of Late Red, which was pretty good. Three beer engines - the other had Kent's Best and Spitfire was off.

Next, I popped into The Tommyfield. This was always The White Hart, in Watney's hands. It became a tapas bar in the late 80's and a few years ago was bought by the small Renaissance pubco. They put in a new kitchen and bar and restored the White Hart name (they say Kennington used to be deer-hunting grounds), although a refurb and relaunch earlier this year saw the 'offering' tweaked to a more 'gastro' food-led pub with emphasis on provenance, and a name change. They have Meantime Pale Ale on keg (sometimes), and three beer engines, which I don't remember the old White Hart having. I had a half of Sharp's Doom Bar. They also had Taylors' Landlord and another beer I'd never heard of.

Across the road is the Dog House, formerly The Roebuck (see? More ungulates). This was a Charrington House popular with the 'old git' contingent. In fact, an old git was outside having a half of lager when I popped in. I guess some regulars will hold on to their local pubs as long as they can. This was the first pub in Kennington to target the new influx. In the mid-90's it reopened with bare walls and floors, reclaimed furniture, board games and wines and spirits leading the menu. I remember they used to have a fake handpump with a keg bitter, but that's now gone and they have three beer engines. I had a half of Black Sheep Bitter, and they also had Bombardier and another beer.

Number four on my list was The Black Prince. This was a pub popular with locals off the huge Ethelred Estate. I remember it as having no cask beer in the 90's, but it's recently changed hands. Check out the bar back - it's still the original Double Diamond one that was there donkey's years ago. Ironic? The pub is now food-led and has four beer engines. I had a half of Young's London Best. Young's Ordinary, Doom Bar (again) and another beer were available.

So far? All but the Prince of Wales is free of tie, though The Tommyfield is part of small pubco. All of the pubs have cask these days but, apart from the Neame house, it was mostly in poor condition, making me wonder if these places can support three or four beer engines. Cask in these pubs was priced between £3.30 and £3.40 a pint which I'd say is premium (The Harp in the West End is £3.10), and based on the quality, not worth it.

I'll round up the rest of the pubs in my next post here, try to find where the C2DE's are doing their drinking, and draw some dodgy conclusions. Stay tuned...