Gorringe Park, Tooting

UPDATE 2012.

Bought by Charles Wells and completely gutted with the total loss of the 1930s fittings.

The former description is shown below.

Right by Tooting railway station, this Young’s corner pub has work from two main periods. The building itself, a three-storey piece of Italianate-style architecture, probably dates from about 1875 but it was given a makeover during the inter-war years, hence the brown and buff tile facing to the ground floor (recently and disgracefully painted over). There are still two rooms, the better of which is the ‘saloon lounge’ (as it calls itself) at the rear which has two-thirds-height fielded panelling, no doubt dating from the inter-war re-modelling. The fireplace with small red bricks and the mirror over it, and textured window glass are part of the same scheme, as are the panelled bar counter and the bar-back.

A winding corridor leads round to the public bar at the front. Judging by the three extant and former doorways this would no doubt have been subdivided a century ago. The basic match-board panelling in this room points up the differing furnishing schemes between the front and the back. There is an old cast-iron fireplace in the public bar but the counter there looks like a relatively modern replacement. Sadly the counters of both rooms are disfigured by clumpy, modern pot-shelves. The name of the pub is said to have come from an estate that lay in the area before the oceans of bricks and mortar arrived.