A Battersea pub flying the plainest and most local name imaginable – its own postcode, SW11, spelled proudly out in full
The South West Eleven posts a strong 4.5 across some sixty reviews and flies what may be the most gloriously literal name in this entire survey: its own postcode, SW11, spelled out in full and worn with pride. The Prat’s naming desk, which has grown fonder and fonder of the honest address-name as this survey has gone on, positively cheered.
Genuinely, definitively Battersea
No pub in this survey needs the “genuinely Battersea” note less. The South West Eleven names the postcode it stands in. It could not be more local if it tried.
The postcode as identity
SW11 is the postcode of Battersea – and over the years it has become more than a sorting code; it is a badge of belonging, an identity, the shorthand by which the neighbourhood knows itself. To name a pub “The South West Eleven” is to plant a flag for the postcode, to declare pride in the exact patch of London it serves. There is something wonderfully democratic about it: no saint, no consort, no borrowed grandeur, just the plain administrative fact of where you are, elevated into a name. It is the ultimate local pub name, belonging to its postcode and to nowhere else on earth.
Spelled out in full
The Prat delights in the detail that it is spelled out – “South West Eleven,” not “SW11.” There is a formality to writing the postcode in words, as though giving it the dignity of a proper name, that turns a dry code into something almost stately. It reads like a title: The South West Eleven, as one might say the Duke of Cambridge or the Merchant of Battersea. The neighbourhood’s postcode, ennobled. The Prat finds this quietly brilliant – a pub that takes the most mundane label imaginable and wears it like a coat of arms.
Pride of place
What the name really expresses is pride of place – the deep, particular loyalty people feel to their exact corner of a city. Londoners identify fiercely with their postcodes, and a pub that names itself for SW11 is offering the neighbourhood a place to gather under its own flag. The 4.5 across sixty-odd reviews suggests the locals appreciate a pub that so plainly, proudly belongs to them and their postcode.
The Prat has come, over the long course of this survey, to a genuine fondness for the postcode-and-address names – the pubs content to be exactly and only where they are. They are the truest locals of all, incapable of being anywhere else, belonging body and soul to their patch of London. The South West Eleven is the purest example the survey has turned up: a pub that took the neighbourhood’s very sorting code and made it a name to be proud of. There is no more local a pub in all of Battersea.
Verdict
A 4.5 across some sixty reviews is a strong score, and the South West Eleven earns it as a proud, honest local flying the most literal name in the survey – its own postcode, spelled out in full and worn like a title. No borrowed grandeur, just pride of place in its purest form.
Go for a pint in the South West Eleven and toast the postcode itself – the badge of belonging that Battersea knows itself by. Some pubs reach for kings and castles; this one reaches for its own front door, and the Prat loves it for that.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
