The Crown and Greyhound
The Crown and Greyhound is a Grade II listed public house at 73 Dulwich Village, Dulwich, London. It is classified by CAMRA as a pub with a regionally important historic interior. The pub is affectionately referred to by locals as "The Dog", and sometimes as "The Dog and Hat". The pub is particularly noteworthy for its post-war connection to the British poetry movement.
The Crown and Greyhound gets its name from two former pubs in Dulwich Village, The Crown, and The Greyhound, which were across the street from each other up to the 1890s. The Crown is Britain's second most common pub name, and using a sign bearing a crown represented a convenient way to show support for the reigning monarch, without the need to change with the occupant of the throne. Pubs called The Greyhound are generally associated with hunting traditions, befitting of the Dulwich Village locality, which still retains elements of its rural origins to this day.
The two inns once attracted a different clientele, The Greyhound being home to the Dulwich Club and middle-class drinkers, whilst The Crown being more the 'local' of the numerous agricultural workers in the area. By the end of the nineteenth century, with encroaching urbanisation in East Dulwich, the customer bases of the two inns had begun to converge, and around 1900, both inns were demolished and replaced by the present Crown & Greyhound Hotel.
The present building was built in the Old English style in about 1900, on the site of The Crown. The original architects for The Crown and Greyhound were Eedle and Meyers, who specialised in pub design. The original plans included a billiards room at the back of the pub, a skittle alley as an outbuilding, a coffee room, and even a masonic temple room on the first floor. A contemporary account notes that one side of the drinking area at the front of the pub was still “carefully divided off for the better class of customer†and that some small bars catered for “the lower class of customer and for the jug and bottle tradeâ€. The Cannon Brewery Company Ltd took over the running of the new pub when it first opened.
The pub retains its snob screens, although they have been re-sited over the partition between the main bar and former coffee room. The ground floor of the pub is subdivided into roughly 4 different rooms, which are described as exhibiting, "a spatial quality in the proportions, windows, and detailing that includes panelling, beams, etched glazing and curved bar which is continuous throughout". The Crown and Greyhound's friezes and ceiling decoration are particularly impressive. The pub also merits a Taylor Walker Heritage Inn blue plaque, by virtue of its historic interest.
...
Wikipedia