CAMPAIGN FOR REAL ALE

GREATER LONDON (WEST) - London W1, Soho, Argyll Arms

National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors Part One

18 Argyll Street, London, W1F 7TP

Tel: 020 7734 6117

Public Transport: Underground: Oxford Circus

Listed Status: Grade II*

View this pub on a local map

The Argyll is an astonishing survival and a welcome escape from frenetic Oxford Street with food and a good range of real ales available. It has one of the most important late Victorian interiors in London and, like the Prince Alfred (p55), shows how pub proprietors and their clients liked small, cosy drinking spaces. However, whereas the Prince Alfred has a peninsula-style servery with radiating screens, the Argyll has a long, straight servery and a series of screened-off drinking areas sandwiched between it and the corridor. The building dates from 1868 but the fittings are from an 1890s remodelling undertaken for the proprietor E Bratt (the architect was probably Robert Sawyer).

At the front there are two entrances, the right-hand one leading into a drinking area while on the left a corridor leads to the rear of the building. The mirrors on the left-hand wall enhance the sumptuous atmosphere with reflections of the screens and glass opposite and light from the lamps. At the back the ‘saloon and dining room’ cut into a high-level glass panel announces this as the smartest part of the pub where there is another glittering display of mirrors. A magnificent, swirly iron stair rail leads to the now modernised first floor. Other features to relish are the highly decorated ceiling, probably dating from 1868; an immensely deep, decorated cornice in the rear parts; an ornamented column in the back area and a delightful little glazed-in office within the servery.