TOP 100 PUBS – THE MASONS ARMS, TEDDINGTON

September 2025. Teddington.

Every £25.50 trip to London needs a new GBG tick and a classic or two, plus a Spoons if I haven’t done it before. Teddington doesn’t have a Spoons, which either adds or takes £100k off average house prices.

But it has a string of attractive looking pubs,

and a corner pub that’s one of the very best in London.

In all honestly, I can’t recall anything (bar a beer score) about the Masons Arms from a trip 15 years ago, so today I fill my mobile notebook with lines about “laughter and lite pop,

Babycham, busy mid afternoon trade (all my age), Summer Lightning (NBSS 3.5) well under a fiver,

bar towels on loan from those Kidderminsters RATs“.

A stream of banter between landlady and locals (“Taster of Bunting ?”, “Tasters are seven quid”), but I felt incredibly welcome, and when she says “It’s pouring down, you’ll have to stay with another“, I’m also tempted.

But I’m conscious of the lack of loos on London rail service, and sprint through the rain to the train to Vauxhall.

And then walk to Victoria via Westminster, which looks sensational.

But you knew that.

Unknown's avatar

Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

6 thoughts on “TOP 100 PUBS – THE MASONS ARMS, TEDDINGTON”

  1. “September 2025. Teddington.”

    Isn’t that Rudolph’s girlfriend, Clarice(?), in the pic above.

    “Teddington doesn’t have a Spoons, which either adds or takes £100k off average house prices.”

    Heh. 😎

    “and a corner pub that’s one of the very best in London.”

    That’s a tough crowd to come out on top in.

    “Babycham, busy mid afternoon trade (all my age), Summer Lightning (NBSS 3.5) well under a fiver,”

    Under a fiver? Blimey.

    “bar towels on loan from those Kidderminsters RATs“.”

    Have they been sewn into one big towel?

    “(“Taster of Bunting ?”, “Tasters are seven quid”)”

    LOL.

    “But I’m conscious of the lack of loos on London rail service”

    Coulda had another and then hit the loo before leaving, unless you too are suffering from BPH?

    “But you knew that.”

    Sort of?

    Also, how many pubs did you turn down?

    Cheers

    Like

    Reply

  2. Here I am recovering from having photographed, drunk in and reviewed too many pubs in the last couple of weeks, and now you throw Teddington at me. A place none of whose doors I have ever darkened. In a last ditch attempt to avoid having to check on train times to the Thames valley, I turned to the always reliable Pubs Galore, where Quinno says that it had got worse recently. https://www.pubsgalore.co.uk/pubs/27815/ (May 2025)

    He describes an Elgoods Plum Porter drunk in the Masons as “stringy”, a word just as appropriate for describing beer as I concede your own “chewy” is. I challenge you to use it in your blog before September is out.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

      1. Luck? He did the same thing in Derby, when we had a last beer of the day in the Victoria near the station. I had been bigging up the beer quality, so he chose what he thought was likely to be the beer with the lowest throughput so that he could give it NBSS 2.

        I prefer your strategy of going for the next pint of whatever beer you’ve just seen poured.

        Liked by 1 person

Leave a comment