I bet you’ve never wondered which London borough has the most Wetherspoons, have you? Well, given this topic came up in conversation recently, I’ve decided to spend a part of my Sunday working out the answer so you don’t have to. You’re welcome!
So how did I go about compiling the list? Well, helpfully, the Wetherspoons website has their pubs broken down by region here. From this, I checked the postcodes of the ones I wasn’t sure about to establish which borough they were located in. The website also still includes the pubs which have sadly closed in recent years. Given these closures, I decided to compare the picture now with the situation a year or so ago before to compare.
So, having compiled the data and noted the ones on the website that are said to have permanently closed in the past couple of years, we have this.
So as you can tell, Camden is the borough with the most Spoons at present, with six branches, followed by Westminster, Southwark and Hillingdon with five apiece. Then we have the City of London which has four, along with Bexley and Bromley. This is interesting as the concentration of branches in central London is not surprising and if I were to bet on which borough would have the most before this exercise, I would probably have said Camden or Westminster. What I find more surprising is the suburban boroughs like Bexley and Hillingdon having a larger number. I suspect this is because they have multiple town centres of a decent size in which they could accommodate a Spoons.
On the opposite end of the table, two boroughs don’t have any Wetherspoons at all! These are Barking & Dagenham, which these days is sadly lacking in pubs generally. The other is Kensington & Chelsea which surprises me somewhat, given that most inner London boroughs have at least one.
But we have to talk about Croydon. Sadly in the past couple of years, the borough has lost five Wetherspoons, including the Milan Bar, the Foxley Hatch and the Skylark. This has meant that they have gone from being top of the table a couple of years ago with eight, to midtable with just three, a bit like Chelsea’s men’s football team. So if you live in Croydon, you’ve sadly seen the biggest drop in the number of Wetherspoons as you’ve had to hand your crown over to Camden.
Two boroughs have seen multiple Wetherspoons close, Newham, which has lost The Miller’s Well in East Ham and The Hudson Bay in Forest Gate. The other is Islington which has seen both The Angel and The Coronet being sold off. I was at The Coronet on its final weekend given it was my local Spoons.
However, it isn’t all doom and gloom, a number of these pubs have been taken over and have reopened under new management. On this list, we have The Coronet on Holloway Road, which is essentially the same, just with any references to Wetherspoons removed. Then there’s the Knight’s Templar on Chancery Lane which is back as The Last Judgement, an apt new name given the pub’s proximity to the Royal Courts of Justice. The Angel has reopened as Junction and The Toll Gate in Turnpike Lane is also back trading.
Plus, Spoons themselves are opening the occasional pub, which reduces the losses just a little bit. The latest one to open is The Stargazer in the O2, which has added another to Greenwich’s total. Plus there is The Captain Flinders which is due to open in Euston anytime now. This isn’t counted on my list, however, so Camden will in fact go back up to seven branches when the new one opens.
So there you have it, more pointless knowledge which you’ve never wondered about! Until the next blog when I look at how many Prets there are in each borough, wait that’s actually not a bad question…
JP
James Potts 