27 Clennam Street
Borough
London
SE1 1ER
020 7407 5643
The striking tiled facade of the Lord Clyde hits you as you turn the corner from Marshalsea Street on to Ayres Street (photo 1). It’s a traditional and atmospheric London boozer which had been in the same family from the 1950s until 2020. Thankfully the new licensees have kept it as it was with its two bars and original fittings. The main bar has a tapered matchboard counter, wood panelling along the walls and a magnificent Truman’s Brewery mirror advertising “Mild Ales and Double Stout”. The smaller back bar also has wood panelling, an original fireplace and a hatch to the bar (photo 3). For good weather there is outside seating on the very short and fully paved Clemens Street.
There’s a good selection of cask beer with London Pride, Landlord and Doom Bar the regulars along with two changing beers. The food speciality is a choice of pies served with mash and mushy peas, along with pub classics like fish and chips and lasagne.
Sport on TV includes football with Premiership, Champions League and international games plus Formula 1 and rugby internationals. There’s a dartboard, and if you haven’t brought your own darts you can borrow some from the bar with a donation to charity.
The Lord Clyde was built in 1913 by Truman’s Brewery and was one of the first pubs to adopt a plainer and simpler interior style as part of the “improved pubs” reaction against ornate Victorian pubs. Trumans went on to build a large number of pubs in a similar style in the 1920s and 1930s. Having said that, the Lord Clyde’s richly tiled exterior does hark back to Victorian times. The later Truman pubs were to feature less tiling but most kept the ceramic corner panel advertising their beers (photo 2).
Lord Clyde was a British army general who led troops in the Crimean War and in the Indian Mutiny. Quite a few pubs are named after him so he must have been well thought of (photo 4).
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