Like the Trafalgar, this pub is not one of London’s Real Heritage Pubs but it is a grade II listed building and the listing description, whose latest amendments date from February 1995, is as follows: “Former rackets courts, now laboratories. The western block 1874-5 by Colonel Clarke RE, the central screen and eastern part identical in design and added in 1882-3 by General Pudsey RE to form a symmetrical composition. Converted to laboratories in c.1906. Stone and stuccoed facades, roof hidden by high parapets. Seven-bay screen with higher two-bay ends. Tuscan pilasters across screen break forward into pairs of Ionic columns set between engaged columns with fluted capitals, all these in antis under projecting parapets at ends. The parapets are elaborate, with raised centrepieces supported on swags and urns set on high and elaborately carved plinths as cornerpieces; all this decoration the work of C R Smith. Rusticated ground floor. At first-floor height busts in high relief set in roundels depict from east to west: Anson, Drake, Cook, Howard, Blake, Benbow, Sandwich, Rodney, Duncan, Collingwood, Howe, Nelson and St Vincent. Nine-bay side elevations and three-bay rear also denoted by pilasters, the ground floor rusticated under fluted frieze and with empty first-floor roundels. Above these a deep frieze and an attic storey also broken into bays by short pilaster strips. Source: PRO ADM 195/47, 20-24.”

This is an imaginative conversion of a truly historic building in the former Royal Naval College. The establishment includes a microbrewery in the upmarket style we have come to expect from the Meantime Brewery. Take time to have a look at the restaurant with the microbrewery plant.

The Old Brewery featured on the London Pubs Group's pub crawl of Plumstead, Woolwich and Greenwich in February 2013.