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SE6 > Fellowship Inn
Fellowship Inn
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Picture source:
Movement80 |
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The Fellowship Inn was situated on
Randlesdown Road. This pub opened in the 1920s with a design by architect F.
G. Newnham. It was grade-II listed as well as being on Camra's National
Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors. This pub closed in 2021 and its lease
put on the market. |
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The Fellowship Inn re-opened in
September 2022 after a long period of closure following the withdrawal of
the previous operators, Electric Star. The pub is now in safe hands being
run by Homegrown Pubs, the same company that run the Carlton Tavern in Maida
Vale. It is a pleasure to sit in its wood panelled rooms and admire various
period features, including the island servery and its small publican’s
office. Not only that but the pub also serves three interesting local real
ales and keep them in excellent condition.’ Originally built in 1923-24 as
part of the Bellingham Estate, is one of London’s largest pubs, and comes
complete with a cafe and cinema on the lower ground floor. The Pub Heritage
Group successfully applied for listing when it was under threat of
demolition in 2011. |
Pub Heritage Bulletin (November 2022) |
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Closed again in September 2023. |
T C (December 2023) |
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Now reopened. |
T C (June 2024) |
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Listed
building details: |
Public house. 1923-4 with alteration
to the rear hall c1926. FG Newnham for the brewery Barclay Perkins and Co.
Description
Materials: brown brick laid in English bond with hipped clay tile roofs and
tall brick chimneys. The brickwork is exposed only to ground-floor window
level with the upper part of the south, east and west elevations rendered
with applied ‘half-timber’ decoration. The rear hall has red brick
dressings.
Plan: located next to Bellingham railway station, the Fellowship Inn is
built on the embankment of the bridge taking Randlesdown Road over the
railway line. The main part of the pub at the top of the embankment, fronts
onto the north side of Randlesdown Road. The adjoining two-storey hall is
situated at the foot of the embankment, off Knapmill Road, with its upper
storey at the same level as the ground floor of the main pub range.
On the ground floor the building consists of a public bar to the west and
saloon bar to the east (originally a lounge and smoke room at the front and
dining room at the rear) with a central servery with an office behind. To
the north is a large function room (originally the lounge/recreation room
and forming the upper floor of the main hall) partitioned at its west end to
form what was originally the children's room. On the lower floor is a beer
cellar to the south with an off-sales area to its north-west and the large
hall to the north. Access to the upper floors is via a lobby and staircase
on the east side of the building. To the north of the first floor is a large
kitchen with the rest of the upstairs area taken up with staff
accommodation.
Exterior: two storeys plus attic and basement in a half-timbered ‘Brewers'
Tudor’ style. The principal, south, elevation is of five bays on the ground
floor with large Tudor-arched entrances (with triple square transoms above
double doors, all with leaded lights) to bays two and four and blocks of
metal casement windows with leaded lights in the remaining bays. The first
floor has six paired metal-framed casements with leaded lights and square
transoms. Below the windows is decorative timber framing with a modern
fascia panel below the two centre windows. The attic storey has three hipped
dormers.
At the east end of the south elevation, the return (with leaded metal
casements) is followed by a Tudor-arched entrance (to the stair lobby). The
east elevation consists of a pair of shallow gabled cross-wings with applied
half-timbered decoration above lower sections of exposed brickwork and with
paired leaded casements in the southern gable. The western elevation again
has applied timber decoration (with four decorative panels) and leaded
casement windows. The northern elevation consists of an angled two-storey
brick block at the end of Knapmill Street. On the ground floor is a timber
shop front, originally the off-sales, with boarded replacements to the
original doors and plate glass display windows. The eastern timber pilaster
is partly missing. Windows above and to the east side of the shopfront have
rubbed brick arches. Above the angled frontage is a flat roof terrace below
the L-shaped first-floor rear of the main pub. This is half- timbered with
leaded metal casements and hipped dormers.
The hall, built in a contrasting neo-Georgian style, is of brick, again in
English bond, with a rendered upper storey and flat felted roof behind a
parapet, with a large pitched skylight in the centre. The west elevation
along Knapmill Street is of five bays divided by pilasters, of rusticated
brickwork on the ground floor and rendered on the first floor. The three
centre bays on the ground floor have round rubbed brick arches. Above the
arches are decorative panels with a pattern of semi-circular brick arches
with an infill of clay tiles set on edge (these were once open features in
the parapet of the originally single-storey hall). The outer bays have
square openings (the north a doorway and south a window) with rubbed brick
lintels with rubbed brick oculi above. The first floor has five large
multi-light windows. The northern elevation is of six bays with pilasters
and with the eastern bay containing a projecting entrance block with access
to the first floor via a metal staircase. The three bays adjoining the
entrance block have the same arches and decorative panels as the western
elevation. The two western bays are blind. The eastern elevation is of four
bays, all with ground floor arched openings, decorative plaques and large
metal casement windows. The south elevation has the same arrangement in its
three bays and joins the main pub building at the west end.
Interior: the saloon bar on the east side of the pub retains its wooden
panelling, entrance lobby screen with leaded transoms and original doors,
stone Tudor-arched fire surround, two dumb waiters, folding screen to the
rear hall and panelled division to the public bar with leaded transoms. The
bar counter is original and the bar back also appears to be original. A
transom with leaded lights and carved Tudor rose decoration divide the
servery. Behind the servery is a small panelled publican’s office with
leaded glazing to the public bar.
The public bar retains its large entrance lobby screen, panelling and fire
surround. The bar counter is original but boarded up above counter level.
The rear lounge has lost most of its original fittings and has had a
suspended ceiling inserted, although the original skylights remain. The
stage at the eastern end is modern although elements of the servery are
original. In the centre of the hall is a circular timber, well-like
structure. This covers one of the two plastered-over original sky-lights of
the single-storey hall and probably dates to the 1920s. The other is no
longer present. To the west of the lounge is the separate children's room.
The WC has its original white-glazed tiling and urinals.
The lower hall has an entrance lobby and cloakrooms to the west and a
smaller lobby in the north-east corner. The hall has a coffered concrete
ceiling and elements of classical decoration including marble-effect wooden
columns around the walls. The original parquet flooring survives and the
hall has cinema seating of uncertain date. The stage at the eastern end has
been damaged by fire. The original servery with its roller shutters, screen
to the entrance lobby, elements of the dado panelling, doors and arched
metal-framed windows all survive. The main entrance lobby retains its
original doors and entrance screen and monochrome floor tiling. The
cloakroom fittings also survive. On the same level, the large off-sales area
retains its original serving counter, shelving, internal leaded glazing and
glass globe lamp fitting.
The upper floors contain staff accommodation and a large kitchen with a
pantry, two dumb waiters, cream glazed-brick decoration with green trim, and
glazed, timber-partitioned store-room with original shelving. The original
staircases and panelled lobby on the east side of the building also survive.
History
The Fellowship Inn was built as part of the London County Council’s
Bellingham Estate in 1923-4. The Bellingham Estate was built on land
acquired in 1920 and planned as a self-sufficient residential area laid out
to resemble a traditional village, embodying the planning ideals of the
turn-of-the-century Garden City Movement. The housing was largely completed
by 1923, partly housing people displaced by slum clearance in Deptford and
Bermondsey. Due to pressure from the temperance movement the LCC was wary of
building, or allowing brewers to build, pubs on their suburban estates and
at first was determined to have no pubs on its estates. The Fellowship Inn
would appear to be one of the earliest such built. The large LCC Becontree
Estate in Dagenham, for example, was virtually pub-free (other than existing
licences) until 1928. When it was eventually deemed that the provision of a
pub was acceptable, they were designed along ‘improved’ lines with the
provision of community facilities such as halls, games rooms and refreshment
rooms, and referred to as ‘refreshment houses’.
The pub was designed by FG Newnham, the house architect of the brewery
Barclay Perkins and Co, one of the largest breweries of the period and which
invested heavily in 'improved' pubs. The Fellowship Inn was the first in its
chain of Anchor pubs. Newnham also designed other pubs on LCC estates for
the brewery including the Downham Tavern (1930 - demolished) on the nearby
Downham Estate and the Cherry Tree on the Beckenham Estate (1933).
A report on a prohibition debate in the House of Lords in an American local
paper, the Spartanburg Herald of 6 July 1924, commented on the opening the
previous week of the Fellowship Inn…’In an effort to evolve an ideal public
house, a big brewery firm has opened a “fellowship inn” at Bellingham, which
is the first of a group of inns intended to serve alcoholic beverages and to
cater to the social wants of all classes and particularly of families. The
Inn’s sign was painted by Sir Arthur Cope, member of the Royal Academy.
Inside the inn there is a large hall where music, dances concerts and lawful
games may be enjoyed. The inn has its own band and its own entertainments
and customers sit at small tables in the continental café style, consuming
tea, coffee or ale as they prefer. The opening ceremony of the inn was
attended…by several society people as well as by county council officials
who are watching the experiment of those new inns with interest. The cooks
and waitresses of the new public house have been instructed at a school
instituted by the brewery company…'
In c1926 an additional storey was added to the rear hall creating an upper
lounge and refreshment area and in 1927 a children's room (a controversial
feature of 'improved' pubs) was added in the lounge area.
Until the late 1960s the large hall at the rear of the pub was used as a
music venue and was part of the London Jazz, and then blues-boom, scenes. In
1963, prior to his fight with Cassius Clay (later Muhammed Ali), Henry
Cooper was reported in a Sports Illustrated article, dated 1 July 1963, to
be living and training at the Fellowship Inn. It seems unlikely that this
amounted to more than light training and there is no evidence that the pub
was ever equipped as a boxing gym. Cooper's main training base was at the
Thomas A Becket on the Old Kent Road. The lower hall was also apparently
used as a cinema.
During the 1970s the former refreshment or games room at the rear of the pub
hosted a disco but both this and the hall fell into disuse and disrepair.
Reasons for Listing
The Fellowship Inn, Randlesdown Road, Bellingham, an ‘improved’ public house
built in 1923-4 by FG Newnham for the brewery Barclay Perkins and Co, is
designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Degree of survival: the survival of most the original interior fittings
and the original layout, as well as the largely unchanged exterior
appearance, makes this a rare, virtually unaltered, example of a 1920s
‘improved' public house;
* Architectural interest: the building shows all the salient features of a
typical improved pub of this era with its ‘Brewers' Tudor’ style, large bar
areas, halls for entertainment, refreshment room, children’s room, off sales
shop and ample kitchen facilities;
* Historic interest: built to serve the London County Council’s Bellingham
Estate by one of the major improving breweries, the Fellowship Inn
represents an early example of the LCC allowing a pub to be built on one of
their estates and is illustrative of a change in social housing policy. |
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