A celebration of Kennington pubs

Do you remember a halcyon time when we could go to a place and have a drink with people we didn’t live with? Well those days will be upon us again in some kind of fashion on 4 July. Some of these pubs are gone forever, some others rebuilt, and few looking amazingly familiar. We could stare at the pictures all day, and enjoy….

The Victorian Elephant and Castle pub in Vauxhall, 1970. Same building, but now ‘Starbucks’.
The King’s Arms pub, Chester Way and Kennington Lane, 1880. Destroyed in WW2, rebuilt 1946.
The Horns Tavern, Kennington Road and Kennington Park Road., 1910. A local institution damaged in WW2 and never really recovered. That and a dislike of Victorian architecture meant its demise in 1965. Now JobCentre Plus and Nisa Foods.
The Roebuck pub, 1972. Still very much there and known as The Dog House.
The Cricketers pub in the Oval standing proudly on game day, 1957. Closed for aeons, but the building is still there.

The Tankard pub, Kennington Road, 1880. Altered through time, but looking amazingly familiar.
The Vauxhall Tavern, 1950. The RVT had shops on either side of it and a thriving community behind until cleared for Spring Gardens in the late 1960’s.
The Prince of Wales, Cleaver Square, 1973. The only thing different is the cars (and the house prices).

2 thoughts on “A celebration of Kennington pubs

  1. Drank in most those back in the day But you missed out some of the best The Lambeth walk The angel and the feathers in Lambeth walk The Duchy arms And the Old Father Thames to name but a few
    Kevin Leach
    Born in wake st then lived on Black Prince road

  2. The Horns is noted as being damaged by a V2 in 1944 but must also have suffered some bomb damage on 30/10/40 during the Blitz. My Grandfather, Frederick Charles Smith was killed by said bomb. The Horns is the only geographic reference we have for his place of death as spoken family history suggests few remains were found. He was cycling from his home in North Cheam to his job as a Constable in the City of London Police when the raid started.

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