As we all (should) know, drinking on the London Underground has been strictly forbidden since 2008, but if you go back further in time, there used to be plenty of drinking on the Underground, as it used to have pubs inside the stations.

In fact, drinking on the Underground was already sort-of already banned in 2008, but the ban was rarely enforced.

The TfL Bylaws 1999 already stated that consuming alcohol on trains was forbidden — unless explicitly permitted by railway staff. It was just that the rule was largely ignored.

The drinking ban of 2008 was more a case of tweaking the existing rules and throwing a ton of publicity at it to make it sound like something new was happening.

Anyway, back in older times, not only was drinking from an open container permitted but at one time there were around 30 pubs on London Underground stations.

The pubs were especially popular a hundred years ago, as they somehow escaped the introduction of licensing hours during WW1 which were aimed at stopping workers from getting drunk at lunchtime and impairing the home war effort.

Of all the pubs, while most were in the ticket halls, some were also to be found on the platforms themselves, at Liverpool Street, Victoria and Slone Square, all on the clockwise platforms. Probably the best known is the former pub on the westbound platform at Sloane Square station.

Known as the Hole in the Wall, it was open to travellers, and also the general public if they purchased a 2p platform pass, “unless you can come to some arrangement with the ticket-collector.”

A short note in The Times of 9th August 1949 on the rebuilding of the station noted that the “tavern” had been on the platform ever since the station was built in 1868.

I believe it was the last of London Underground’s pubs to close, back in 1985, which is probably why it is still the best remembered. It was also a major location in A Word Child, by Iris Murdoch, which also featured another London Underground pub, at Liverpool Street.

Iris described the bars as “the source of dark excitement, places of profound communication with London, with the sources of life.” They were the watering holds of Pluto’s kingdom.

Although it was almost as well known amongst the regulars for having a pub cat, which makes Sloane Square doubly unique for having both a pub and a cat in the tube station.

The site of the small pub is now the convenience store on the westbound platform.

At Liverpool Street station could be found Pat-Mac’s Drinking Den, which was on the eastbound platform of the Metropolitan Line. It was converted into a cafe in 1977. That small pub also had the novelty of having a serving hatch leading directly onto the platform, letting passengers drink while waiting for a train.

At Mansion House, a buffet bar was run by Spiers and Pond, which was tantalizingly close to the platforms, but not quite on them.

Spiers and Pond also operated a venue at Moorgate station, and while on the station proper, it appears to have been accessed from outside the main building.

In fact, Spiers and Pond were the WH Smiths of refreshment rooms on the London Underground, having been there from the very start, and ending in 1932 with venues at:

  • Baker Street
  • St. John’s Wood Road
  • Marlborough Road
  • Swiss Cottage
  • Aldersgate
  • Farringdon Street
  • King’s Cross
  • Edgware Road
  • Praed Street
  • Queens Road (Bayswater)
  • Notting Hill Gate (closed in the 1950s)
  • Moorgate Street
  • South Kensington
  • Gloucester Road
  • Hammersmith
  • Ladbroke Grove
  • Westbourne Park

They were in place after signing a deal with the Metropolitan Railway while it was still being built, and the British Periodicals of Sept 1866 noted that the new Moorgate-street station building, while only temporary, was much improved by the presence of Spiers and Pond’s refreshment rooms.

The partnership of Spiers and Pond undeniably revolutionised catering on the transport network, and ended up with some 200 venues across England and some 60 dining cars.

A writer in All The Year Round of December 1867 praised the “modern magicians”, who had ended an abuse “under which the British railway traveller had groaned ever since railways were”.

In a description that apes later British Railway’s catering, railway food before Spiers and Pond were described as “the scalding infusion, satirically called tea, the stale bad buns, with their veneering of furniture polish, the sawdusty sandwiches, so frequently and so energetically condemned, and, more so than all, the icy stare from the counter, the insolent ignoring of every customer’s existence, which drives the hungry frantic,”

Some of their branches acquired a less savoury reputation though, with Edgware Road closing in 1968 thanks to being a popular location for commuters seeking succour in the arms of a lady of the night.

By the 1960s, Spiers and Pond was owned by Grand Metropolitan Hotels, who in 1971 bought Truman Breweries. This lead to a mini-revolt as the bars on the Underground switched from Bass and Worthington to Truman’s beers the following year.

Some of their other outlets on the London Underground that were of note included a bar at South Kensington station which acquired the nickname of The Snakepit for reasons which no one has ever quite worked out.

Paddington Station had a “blue room”, which was more due to the habit of calling the best room in the house a blue room, and by railway standards, this was said to have been quite a posh establishment.

Baker Street’s ticket hall bar was known, not unsurprisingly as, Moriarties. Rather grander is the pub to be found above the station in the old Chiltern Court block of flats, which is still there, and now a branch of Wetherspoons.

A Broom Cupboard is the average size of a flat today but was once the nickname of the pub to be found at Kings Cross underground station, due to its compact size.

Incidentally, the toilets of the modern Betjeman Arms pub in St Pancras station are apparently, a converted broom cupboard.

Quite why the pubs died out is a bit of a mystery. Certainly, the fading fortunes of the Truman Brewery who owned most of the venues can be considered to be a factor, but more likely it was simply that people were less inclined to grab a quick pint on the way home.

In the early days, trains were slow and journeys were long, so a pint to fortify the body while waiting 10 minutes wasn’t an unreasonable idea. Today with trains every couple of minutes and delivering commuters to their destinations at speeds that would have amazed our Victorian ancestors, a pint on the Underground seems less necessary.

…although a pint at the destination after 40 minutes of another person’s headphones and smelly armpits is more likely to be necessary.

As such, there is still one pub left, which can be reasonably considered to be “on the London Underground”, and that is at Kew Gardens, although you have to go outside the station to get into the pub, which has windows right next to the platform.

It’s a suitable point to stop on the way home.

Cheers!

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24 comments
  1. It is worth also mentioning that there were at one stage 14 “wet canteens” on the Underground for staff including one on the platform at Wembley Park where drivers would take a pit-stop and emerge to drive the trains! One of these was in the basement of the Underground’s HQ at 55 Broadway which used to attract a crowd from Scotland Yard across the road. That is until one night a vicious fight kicked off between Tube Staff and the Yardies which resulted in the “facility” closing shortly afterwards. The other “wet canteens” closed over the next couple of years the last being one above Camden Town Station. Different days, different times!

  2. ron mansfield says:

    I regularly frequented the bar on the Liverpool St Met line on the way home from work – when you were a child!!!

  3. Andrew Bowden says:

    Booze is banned? Could have fooled me, given how much you still see being consumed. Let’s scrap the uninforceable ban and b ring back the platform pubs!

  4. Brendan says:

    Stretching the London Underground theme a bit, but the buffet on platform 6 and 8 at Stratford Station – serving the central line – was licensed until the mid 2000s.

  5. Tony Roberts says:

    I’m pretty sure Moriarty’s on Baker Street lasted beyond 1985. The smoking ban post Kings Cross fire saw the remaing bars closed .

    • Paul Ashby says:

      Yes,it was definitely open 88/89. I think you are right that it was the Kings cross fire that hastened its closure. Despite them serving the best pint of Guinness I have ever had in this country, it was often a fairly grim experience, smoke filled and flooded toilets.

  6. MartinO'London says:

    “and that is at Kew Gardens, although you have to go outside the station to get into the pub”

    Well now you do, but in the early 80’s you could walk from the bar traight onto the platform.

    • Peter C says:

      Kew Gardens used to have two small bars. One rail-side and one land-side separated by the serving area.

  7. Jon B says:

    The toilets in the Betjeman Arms used to be where the private dining room is now on the corridor to the current toilets – was nearly very embarrassing when I bowled in fiddling with my zip!

  8. Dominic says:

    I recall the bars on Sloane Square station and at Baker Street from around the mid-70s. I could be wrong but I think they served Truman’s (keg of course) Bitter.

  9. Clara Flemons says:

    Does anyone remember in the 60’s a restaurant that was quite classy inside Baker Street Station. I used to take my little brother in there for soup or an omelette after shopping. It was such an integral part of the station that it must still be there , probably under a different name . Very swish inside.

    • Peter of London says:

      Clara, you’re probably thinking of the restaurant in Chiltern Court that Ian mentions above. That’s the large old block of apartments on top of the station.

      It was featured in John Betjeman’s documentary Metro-Land. You can probably find a clip on the Internet of it somewhere.

      It’s now a Wetherspoons that you access by going down stairs from street level near the Sherlock Holmes statue. Not sure if there used to also be an access direct from the station.

      Credit to Wetherspoons, they’ve kept it very nice inside, pretty close to how it looks in Metro-Land with grand columns topped by crests and shields.

    • Clara Flemons says:

      Thanks Peter , I was near Baker Street on Sunday and tried to find the building that was The Chiltern Court. I realise with more research at home I was on the opposite side of the road to where I should have been !! Next time I’m in London I know exactly where to head for. There was a side entrance into the Chiltern inside the Station. My little brother and I felt like very fine diners in there after a day out. I was 14 and of course ‘very sophisticated’ ;))

  10. Mark Hayward says:

    Does anyone remember the whistle stop pub located in the ticket hall inside Victoria tube station? I regularly used it in the late 70s before going to Football at Chelsea would love to see any old photos of it Can anyone help?

  11. Angela says:

    Does anyone remember the Baker Street Tea Rooms situated within the Baker Street underground station in the 1950’s?

  12. Derek Forryan says:

    My memory is a lttle vague but i am sure there was a pub at piccadilly, called the white bear (seem to remember a stuffed bear by the entrance). This would be early 1980s and i could be wrong about the name.

    • Mike Olliffe says:

      There was a bar there -don’t remember the name. I seem to remember fancy cocktails being served – all a long time ago.

  13. Geoffrey Davies says:

    If you take the exit from the ticket hall at Piccadilly station which leads to the South side of Piccadilly/West side of lower Regent Street you will pass a couple of doors on the left in the passage. These are now evidently for TfL staff use but I seem to remember that they led into the White Bear. It had a reputation latterly as a hangout for rent boys and their clients. I never went into it.

    • Tony says:

      Glassdoor somebody remembers the White Bear at Piccadilly London, I and my fellow hgv drivers used to visit there every time we stopped in London back in the 70s, the Landlady used to be from up our way. Birkenhead, had some great times and yes there was a big brown bear also a bloody big tree inside the pub, now I am in my70s and have been back to visit London many times and although i knee it was on piccilly could not find where it was ?

    • ianvisits says:

      The Waxy O’Connor’s pub just off Piccadilly has a tree inside the pub.

    • Tony says:

      Sorry will reply again, Glad somebody remembers the White Bear in Piccadilly, I and some other hgv drivers used To go there way back in the 70s, when stopping in London,
      the Landlady used to come from up our way. Birkenhead across the water from Liverpool , so we used to have good time (drinking) it was the first time we have seen blokes with handbags and high heels ? Now it’s excepted but back then. In recent times have been back visiting London (now I am in my 70s) and have tried to find it without success ( thought I must have dreamed it) but thanks to Derek and Geoff I now know i didnt. Cheers all.

  14. Roger Chicken says:

    The one in Hammersmith H&C was The Doctors Dilemma. Basically it was where the ticket machines are now.

  15. Jonathan Denne says:

    I recall that there used to be a bar on the platform between the Central Line and the Overground line at Stratford Station.

  16. Ray Barnsley-Whitfield says:

    As a fitter’s mate at LT’s lift and escalator department I and a few others used to use the Hole in the Wall at King’s Cross station,situated off the stairs from the District & Circle. I later became Head Porter of Chiltern Court above Baker Street station. The Chiltern restaurant became, for a time, the recruitment office for London Underground which is when the coats of arms on the ceiling were restored.

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