An 18th-century Putney High Street pub, one of Young’s founding houses with shire-horse beer deliveries, now crowned with a rooftop ‘Putney Beach Club’ sun-trap
The Spotted Horse holds fourteen hundred and sixty-eight reviews and a 4.4 – a strong score on a very large sample – and it is a genuine historic treasure with a modern twist: an eighteenth-century Putney High Street pub, one of Young’s founding houses, now crowned with a rooftop “Putney Beach Club” sun-trap.
The historic Young’s pub
The Spotted Horse has genuinely deep roots. It is a historic pub that opened in the eighteenth century, and it holds a special distinction: it was one of Young’s founding pubs – part of the very foundation of the great Wandsworth brewery Young & Co. There is genuine heritage here – the eighteenth-century origins, the founding-Young’s status, the long history on Putney High Street. It has a lovely piebald-horse model over its entrance (giving the “Spotted Horse” its name), an open fire inside, and it was elegantly remodelled in the Edwardian period. And there is a wonderful old detail: the pub once had its beer delivered from Young’s Ram Brewery in Wandsworth by shire horse – the great dray horses hauling the barrels through the streets, a genuinely lovely piece of old brewing tradition. There is real history and character to it – the 18th-century founding-Young’s pub, the shire-horse deliveries, the piebald horse over the door.
The spy’s meeting place
The Spotted Horse carries one genuinely extraordinary piece of history: it was, remarkably, a clandestine meeting place for the atom spy Klaus Fuchs and his Soviet handler, Aleksandr Feklisov, in 1949. Fuchs was one of the most notorious spies of the twentieth century – a physicist who passed atomic-bomb secrets to the Soviet Union – and this ordinary-seeming Putney pub was one of the discreet spots where such shadowy Cold War business was quietly conducted. The Prat’s history desk records this with due gravity – the momentous and shadowy history that unfolded, all unknowing, in the corners of an ordinary old pub. It is a genuinely remarkable footnote – the historic Putney pub that, for one dark chapter, played a small part in the great secret drama of the atomic age.
The rooftop beach club
Today the Spotted Horse marries its genuine history with a thoroughly modern crowd-pleaser – for in the 2010s it gained a rooftop bar, and it was a finalist in the 2018 Casual Dining Awards for Best Designed Pub/Bar. The rooftop is now the “Putney Beach Club” – a beach-themed sun-trap sitting right above the high street, complete with its own private bar, serving tropical cocktails (frozen daiquiris, pina coladas) – a genuine escape-to-the-coast-without-leaving-Putney delight. Downstairs, it is a proper pub – fresh seasonal British dishes and pub classics, famous Sunday roasts (including a giant sharing Yorkshire pudding), well-poured pints, wines and craft beer, and Sky Sports throughout. There is genuine appeal to it – the historic Young’s pub below, the beach-club sun-trap above, the good food and drink, the lively welcome. Its strong 4.4 across a very large sample confirms it – a genuinely good, much-loved pub. There is real history and fun in the whole thing.
Between its eighteenth-century founding-Young’s heritage, its shire-horse deliveries and extraordinary Cold War history, and its modern rooftop Putney Beach Club, the Spotted Horse is a genuinely characterful and much-loved Putney pub. Its strong score across a very large sample marks it as a genuinely good and much-loved pub. The Prat’s desk enjoys a pint by the open fire, ascends to the beach club for a frozen daiquiri, and raises a historic glass to the Spotted Horse.
The pub
A strong, hugely popular pub doing a good 4.4 across a very large sample – the Spotted Horse, an 18th-century founding-Young’s pub on Putney High Street with a rooftop Putney Beach Club.
Verdict
Strong, hugely popular, and genuinely historic – the Spotted Horse, an 18th-century Young’s pub with a modern rooftop beach club.
Have a pint downstairs and a cocktail on the rooftop Putney Beach Club at the Spotted Horse – an 18th-century founding-Young’s pub on Putney High Street, once a Cold War spy’s meeting place.
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]
