Crown London Hotel, Cricklewood

A grand Jacobean-style two-storey public house built in 1899-1900 by the Cannon Brewery of Clerkenwell. The architects were Shoebridge & Rising and most of the design work on the Crown is supposed to have been done by a 43-year-old architect called Henry Whiteman Rising (1857-1936). He had started work as a joiner in Lowestoft and his pub designs were always noted for their excellent woodwork and complex bar fittings.

It received a massive refurbishment after being purchased by the Moran Group, an Ireland-based pub and hotel company, in 1998 which saw the rear of the hotel being gutted and also a new 152-room hotel built on land to the right and which opened in 2001. The two are linked by a glass and concrete structure. However, the original public bar at the front and lounge on the right of the original building are little altered since 1900.

The lounge is a long, narrow room with two sets of doors on the right and a door to the lobby at the front, so it is likely to have been subdivided in the past by partitions. One set of doors declaring ‘The Crown Lounge Cricklewood’ and another towards the rear says ‘Buffet, Dining Room, Billiards’. There are also three carved fireplaces with green glazed brick facings, which could indicate it was three separate rooms in the past. There is a splendid multi-paned bar-back fitting with square pillars with capitals. Just above the main shelf there is a row of ornate deep-cut etched mirrors featuring birds and flowers and on the far left a curved section that might indicate a publican’s office was situated behind here. The bar counter looks to be original and is curved at the right-hand end; parquet floor throughout. Good plasterwork on the ceiling, in a frieze and in the spandrels of the windows; a number of bell-pushes remain.

Some of the bar fittings in the public bar at the front appear more inter-war than Victorian – at either end the bar counter front seems original but more recent in the middle where there is a modern marble top. Through three archways on the left there is a smaller servery with another curved counter similar to the front left and right parts. The bar back is of six bays and looks inter-war – bays two and four are doorways for staff – fridges have been carefully introduced with wooden edged doors. There are panelled wood surround fireplaces in both front and rear areas on the left. Four sets of doors into the front bar indicate it was originally subdivided.

The small lobby between the two bars has a marble floor laid diagonally, an ornate wood surround fireplace with green mottled glazed brick facing, and an open staircase.