This pub is not only a grade II listed building, it is also a Three Star pub on the Campaign for Real Ale’s (CAMRA) National Inventory with an interior of outstanding national historic importance, and the description is as follows: “Boasting one of the most opulent interiors of any London pub, this is a prime example of the extremes to which pub designers went during the golden age of pub building in the late 19th century. Currently owned by Ewe Hospitality, this substantial end-of-terrace pub was built in 1857 and underwent a magnificent refit probably in the 1890s. The grand entrance porch is embellished with glorious tiled columns and an intricate mosaic floor that announces the name of the pub. Two of the porch’s three doors are still in use. On entering the luxurious right-hand room, the eye is first attracted to the elegantly curving semi-circular bar counter and the elaborate canopy above it. This counter looks out onto a spacious room that is a feast for the eyes. The grey marble of a stately fireplace is echoed by the two marble pillars that support arches enhanced with gilt patterning. All around the walls is a dizzying series of mirrors – nearly forty of them - each separated from its neighbour by a spiralling wooden pillar. At the far end, beneath another arch, is a recessed bay containing a large window with decorative stained glass. The ceiling is decorated with highly detailed foliage patterns. The woodwork below the counter is original, curves upward elegantly and contains intricate oval emblems within lozenge-shaped surrounds. The woodwork in the bar-back is supported in two places by small marble pilasters which have a sensual bulge entirely in keeping with the excesses of the decor throughout the pub. The paintings of naked ladies on the canopy and elsewhere date only from 1965. On the left of the bar-back is an opening to the small middle room, but originally there was no such access (as evidenced by a scene in the film Bunny Lake is Missing, made in 1965). This begs the question – just how did staff gain access to the bar of the middle room? There has certainly been some minor re-organization of the layout. For example, a door which once connected left and right rooms now leads only a to a modern corridor. The left-hand room was once clearly divided into three, as the patterning in the ceiling shows. The woodwork below the counter and matchboard panelling on the walls is all much less elaborate than in the grander right-hand room. The simpler bar-back in here very probably dates from the 1890s re-fit. A door containing patterned glass once led to a corridor and to the right-hand room but it has been sealed up. An ugly modern banquette has been unsympathetically inserted in this room. In both rooms the upper areas of various partitions contain hundreds of small glass panels with foliage motifs. Over the first floor landing is an impressive Victorian skylight and below it some deep, ornate cornices.” Quotation from The Local: “The Lounge belongs to an older order, like first-class on the District railway. It is found in its perfection in the old-established houses like the Warrington, which Ardizzone has drawn. The Warrington is a landmark in Maida Vale. With a wonderful situation on the corner of Sutherland Avenue and Warrington Crescent, it is a fine building that dominates a whole neighbourhood. Nor has it rested on its laurels and let progress pass it by. A lighted sign on its exterior proclaims the existence here of ‘London’s Liveliest Lounge.’ This is a proud boast and an interesting claim, for liveliness is a quality not encouraged by the modern Licensing Bench, who take the view that if you must drink you had better drink sotto voce, so to speak, and such amenities such as music and dancing tend to aggravate the crime. But the Warrington has done its best to justify it by the very lively, very modern, decorations recently grafted on to its historic Lounge. The Lounge has a magnificent staircase, heavy, old-fashioned, imposing to the last degree. The mere sight of the staircase makes you think of Edwardian revelry, of well-nourished bookmakers and stout ladies in cartwheel hats, of feather boas and parasols and malacca canes, of dogskin gloves and big cigars. Until fairly recently, indeed, you could still find something of this atmosphere in the Liveliest Lounge. Now, however, the Lounge has been furbished up. The staircase is still there but the furniture is modern. The blonde barmaids are hardly more up to date than the tables and chairs. The custom has been modernized, too. The frowsy survivals of Edwardian days who still haunt Maida Vale are swamped by the brighter young people who find the new Lounge more to their taste than the old. You must move with the times nowadays, and the Warrington deserves all credit for keeping abreast. After all, the staircase and the arches are still there for Ardizzone to draw.” The book has a coloured illustration of the Warrington’s lounge opposite the description and the front cover has a black-and-white illustration captioned ‘Christmas Eve at the Warrington’.

Quotation from Back to the Local: “Until the redecoration the whole Lounge shared something of this air of the days when it did not need to claim to be the Liveliest Lounge. Luckily the staircase remained. It looked a bit incongruous at first, amongst the modern furniture and the modern custom that the furniture brought with it. But there is a vitality in these survivals that you cannot altogether drive out with three-legged tubular stools, and the atmosphere of Maida Vale itself still favours the Edwardian side. Now that the modernization is ten years old or so, it seems to matter less. The first thing you notice is the staircase and the arches, and against that background the flashiest of present-day types begins to look more and more as though he had a dog-cart waiting outside.” The listing description is as follows: “Mid C19 with later alterations. Brick, stuccoed, channelled 1st floor, faience entrance front. 3 storeys, 3 bays with additional bay of 2 storeys to right. Ground floor has wide projecting porch with semi-circular ends and large shell niche surmounted by a panelled balcony at 1st floor level. Porch approached by a curved flight of steps with mosaic decoration and is supported on faience columns, damaged Ionic capitals boxed in at time of resurvey. Triple pilastered entrance in faience with lion head motifs. To 1st floor, sash windows, tripartite to side bays in architraves with pediment containing decorative stucco work in relief. Pair of volutes to centre with festoon. Band at pediment level. 2nd floor stepped tripartite round-arched sashes in architraves with central pediment. Consoles to sides. Shallow pedimented blocking course displaying hotel name. Further decorative stucco work to additional bay and Randolph Avenue front which has niches containing busts at 1st floor level. Good interior including bars with volutes and marble tops, panels of decorative leaded-light glass, elaborate cornices with scrollwork and shell motifs, Ionic marbled arcade, marbled fireplace and closed string staircase with turned balusters and newels with ball finials in C17 style and other original fittings. Porch flanked by pair of octagonal lamps with scrolled iron bases on terracotta pedestals.”

The WhatPub link is here: WhatPub/Warrington

The Pub Heritage Group link is here: PHG/Warrington

The Warrington Hotel featured on the Evening Crawl of Maida Vale on 22 May 2002, the Evening Crawl of Maida Vale and Bayswater on 7 December 2005, the Daytime Crawl of NW London and Maida Vale on 7 October 2006, the Viva Victorian: Evening Crawl of Maida Vale and Maida Hill on 5 December 2012, the Rural Rides: Daytime Crawl of Kensal Green, Maida Hill, Maida Vale and St John's Wood on 11 February 2017, and the Grand Pubs Near the Grand Union Canal: Evening Pub Tour of Maida Vale, Tyburnia and Paddington on 6 December 2023.