The Mayflower, Rotherhithe

"Shocking" is all I can say about this pub and landlord. I visited with my wife and a small group of friends for a lunchtime drink and a bite one recent Saturday after participating in a charity event. My wife and I used to live locally many years ago and, as we were in the area, thought it may be nice to pop in.

The bar staff were pleasant enough, though English was obviously not their first, of even fourth or fifth language, but the beer was palatable, though nothing outstanding. And so we took our drinks and ventured out onto the jetty to enjoy the Thames view. On returning inside once the rain started we were met with the site of a grizzled-faced man standing at the end of the bar, clutching a small white dog and staring at us with what I can only describe as utter contempt. What brought this reaction on from this man, who it soon became apparent was the landlord, was, and remains beyond both my wife and I, and our friends understanding. However, not content with glaring at us with a face that could flatten even the liveliest of lagers, he proceeded to beckon to a very large, Neanderthal-type fellow who, after 'Old Grizzly' had muttered a few words into employee's cauliflowered ears, proceeded to stand, arms folded by the door and join his boss is staring menacingly at us from across the pub.

My wife and I remember this pub when it was a friendly local pub, attracting an eclectic mix of local residents and workers, and very much in the spirit of this historic and traditional corner of London. However, The Mayflower of today resembles more an overpriced and unattractive pastiche of its former self, with the old beer signs and tankards having been replaced with hideous cut glass and porcelain statues of dolls, children on swings, teddy bears and swans, (of the kind that your mad great aunt collects from the back of Sunday magazines and arranges on the mantlepiece of her bungalow next to a plate picturing Princess Di).

The food in The Mayflower is ridiculously overpriced and, though we were intending to eat, were put off from doing so not just by the landlord from hell and his apparent wish to start a fight of some kind, but by the rather wanton and unhappy faces of the dinners as they pushed their rather miserable-looking portions of food around their plate's while muttering disappointedly to one another in their native tongues (the dinners all being tourists).

It would seem that what was once such a gem of a local pub has been replaced by pale a imitation of what a traditional London pub should be. The character has been replaced with kitsch, and the friendly atmosphere with a rather malevolent one. Perhaps if we are lucky this rather unpleasant and perhaps unbalanced individual will also be replaced and the pub can once again be enjoyed without the fear of confrontation or cut glass.

2 Aug 2008 18:19