Welcome back to Vittles Pub Guide week! On Monday, we published the first instalment: Jimmy McIntosh’s fully updated guide to central London’s best pubs. We’ve had West London as well. Today, we go south. We will be publishing every day between now and Saturday, when we’ll share the top 10 best pubs in London. Cheers.
All entries by Jimmy McIntosh, unless otherwise stated. Artwork by Dan Biddulph. Click here for a reminder of ‘the rules’.
Kentish darts boozers, Cockney strongholds, idyllic country establishments - no compass point quite has the breadth and variety of pub as South London.
The Sultan78 Norman Rd, SW19 1BT
Once in a pint of Blue Moon the hop-headed anoraks at CAMRA and I align: Wimbledon’s The Sultan, which was their South West London Pub Of The Year in 2025, is one such case. It’s a supremely handsome hostelry, a picture of stoicism set against the cute terraced houses of the backstreets by the Wandle. Inside, the Hop Back Brewery-run boozer ticks all the relevant boxes, with its Morrisesque flooring and buxom art deco curves dominating both rooms, and its range of drink. There are at least seven ales and ciders backing up a number of the more outré macro lagers, some of the best in the capital. My hot tip? Get one of the pies, they’re the ultimate accoutrement to seven to ten pints of something warm, flat and hoppy.
The Trafalgar
I discovered this Colliers Wood pub only a couple of years ago, after investigating the antics of the landowner, who tried and failed to shut it down. After interviewing its landlord, Oli, I was invited to ‘understand the gaff’ and speak to the locals, and suddenly I’d spent the whole night with them drinking pint after pint. Most of them talk like there’s magic in the bricks and mortar of the tiny boozer. It’s easy to see why they’re all so enamoured: pints are often £5 or less, the mostly independent craft beer is immaculately kept and there are affordable bar snacks. The decor is that type of pared back wooden furnishings and stained carpets you imagine in your head when you think up a historic boozer, and there’s usually the faint hum of music from a record player in the corner. Together with the nearby Sultan, plus The William Morris Pub and the Brazilian bar Buteco do Duda that both sit on the riverside, you could design one of the best bar crawls in the city in this forgotten part of Southern suburbia. (Find out more about the campaign to save the Traf here.) Andrew Kersley
**Rose’s (The Prince Albert)**47-49 Hare St, SE18 6NE
Woolwich is an area ‘on the up’. Unfortunately, an influx of new money and residents is usually a death knell for an area’s public houses. The Anglesea Arms, The Bull and The Gun Pit are just three of the many pubs in the area to have poured their last pints since the introduction of the Elizabeth line. It’s why it’s all the more important to make the trip south east to Rose’s, a bustling, multi-generational town centre pub that’s actually called The Prince Albert. It’s vaguely nautical themed, and the glossy ceiling panels and dark wood wainscot certainly give it the feeling of boozing in a particularly glamorous ship. But for me it’s all about the entertainment on offer: quizzes, meat raffles, karaoke – and even the odd drum and bass night. Truly a pub for the community.
**The King’s Arms **
There’s a lot to be said for a pub that exists purely as a kind of pleasure portal; a building that’s been designed solely to indulge the senses and get you hooned in as short an amount of time as possible. Enter: The King’s Arms. In 2024 the Kennington pub redid its garden, turning what was a scrubby little yard into a sports lover’s paradise. There are big, easily viewable screens. There are screens in little heated, covered booths. There are screens in places that by all rights shouldn’t have screens. And there’s an outdoor bar, about the only place in London where it’s acceptable to get a pitcher. That’s before even mentioning the inside: an old school, old-boy-heavy utopia of wit and warmth. The only place to watch all the football, all at once.
The Ancient Foresters282 Southwark Park Rd, SE16 2HB
Although a significant number of cockneys moved out of London in the latter half of the 20th century – east to Romford and Dagenham, or down south to Kent – you can still find the odd enclave in the city. Bermondsey proper is the place with the best boozers, and you can do a very good seven-pub crawl from Surrey Quays, across the park, and along Southwark Park Road towards the Bricklayers Arms junction (not recommended on a Millwall matchday). The Ancient Foresters is everything these types of places should be: close-knit, bacchanalian and with a giant shrine to the Rat Pack on the stage at the back. Come here for a fading, majestic example of how pubs once were.
Below the paywall: more pubs! In Peckham, Blackheath, Tadworth, Croydon, Dartford, Brixton and more.
