Welcome
Welcome to the website for West London CAMRA! This site is dedicated to West London Branch interests which right now means completing our hat trick of publicity crawls for GBBF 2009, celebrating our Pub of the Year and runners up and completing surveys for 'Round the Houses, a guide to pubs in SW1.
GBBF Publicity Crawls
West London CAMRA's Local Pubs Week kicked off on Monday, 13 July, with a GBBF publicity crawl, using The Albion, 121 Hammersmith Road W14, as base camp. Pictured above are branch members wearing festival T-shirts,gathering posters and leaflets before venturing out to deliver material to local pubs. Participants received free T-shirts and top quality fresh-baked pizza. Returning to base with a completed crawl sheet earned each of them a free pint of beer. Hosts, James and Chris Slater, join in the festivities.
The next crawl was held on Sunday, 19 July, at The Cleveland Arms on Chilworth Street, W2, from 12 to 6 pm. Free buffet and festival T-shirts were offered to all participants, along with a free pint of beer with each completed crawl sheet.
The third and final publicity crawl will be at the Carpenters Arms, Seymour Place W1 on Saturday, 1 August from 12 pm onwards. Free Subway sandwiches will be provided along with remaining T-shirts. As for the first two crawls, participants will receive a free pint of beer in return for each completed crawl sheet.
CAMRA's Best of the West!
Many thanks to all who voted. You selected The White Horse at Parsons Green as West London Pub of the Year (POTY). Known affectionately as The Sloanie Pony, this large, comfortably-furnished open plan pub serves an impressive array of beautifully-kept real ales, as well as a broad range of draught and bottled foreign beers. Regular offerings include Thornbridge Jaipur, Harveys Sussex Best, Oakham JHB and Hobson's Mild. Belgian Cantillon is available on tap along with Sierra Nevada brews from California. Reasonably-priced gourmet food is served at lunch and dinner time and a good selection of barbecue grub is cooked in the front garden during the warmer months. Dan Fox and Ben Lockwood lead a team of friendly, efficient servers.
This year, two pubs share the honour of Runner-up. These are The Star Tavern, Belgrave Mews West SW1, and The Cleveland Arms on Chilworth Street W2. The Star is a perennial favourite, having appeared in every edition of the Good Beer Guide and chosen West London POTY in 2005, while the Cleveland Arms is a fairly recent discovery that has quickly become popular with the branch. Your third favourite pub was The Mitre, Craven Terrace W2, a fairly recent acquisition by Youngs Pubs.
Sustainable Communities Act
After 5 years of persistent campaigning CAMRA, as a lead member of the Local Works coalition, achieved a great campaign victory that saw the Sustainable Communities Act become law in October 2007. In October 2008, The Government invited Local Authorities to ‘opt in’ to the Act. Actively supporting it is one of the useful and direct ways you can help to preserve our pubs.
The Act will enable CAMRA to pursue measures including:
- Increasing the number of pubs eligible for rate relief
- Ensuring full planning permission is require for convert a pub to another use
- Outlawing the use of restrictive covenants that prevent a closed pub being reopened
- Allocating funding to initiatives to promote local beers
For further information and a sample letter to write to your local councillor urging your local authority to opt in, if they have not done so already, please click [HERE]. This is the essential next step in making the Act work for us.
‘Round the Houses– A Guide to pubs in SW1 Next Year’s Guide – You Decide!
The award-winning West London Pub Guide, published in 2005, is a highly-prized collector’s item. The last of its breed as a comprehensive, wide-area guide, CAMRA branches are now turning towards smaller, local area guides that are easier to update in today’s rapidly-changing pub landscape. We are currently completing surveys for ‘Round the Houses, a Guide to pubs in the SW1 postal area. If you want to contribute, all you have to do is visit a designated pub, complete a form confirming basic details (address, telephone number, opening hours, facilities, etc.) and put your creative talents to use writing a brief description. For further details, please contact Kimberly Martin...
