Although this pub is not a listed building, it is a One Star pub on the Campaign for Real Ale’s (CAMRA) National Inventory with an interior of Special National Historic Interest, and the description is as follows: "A rare back-street survivor in an area of London where most pubs have long since been snapped up by the property developers.

This is a remarkable survivor, clinging on in an area where dozens of back-street locals have disappeared over the last two decades. More than that, it has retained its multi-roomed interior, and its central servery is still in its original location.

It is named after the Licensed Victuallers’ Asylum, which formerly occupied grand buildings just to the north of the pub. In contrast to contemporary connotations, this site was not a place where distressed pub landlords were hidden away; instead ‘asylum’ is used in the older sense, meaning sanctuary.

It was rebuilt in the late 1930s of brick with faience on the exterior ground floor, with two storeys and rooms in the roof above. There are three doors on the Asylum Road side – the left one leads to the pool room; the middle one gives access to the private quarters upstairs; and the right hand door was blocked up in the 1970s. The main entrance on the Meeting House Lane side leads to the large bar on the right and another door on the Kings Grove side also leads to the larger bar on the right.

Originally there were four rooms, two of which have been combined. A door to the small left-hand room is long gone, replaced with an arched doorway. Originally, the small rear room (now a pool room) could only be reached either from an external door, or via a shared gents toilet. This changed in 2008, however, when a narrow arch was cut into the wall allowing access from the large bar, and the toilets were redesigned so that they no longer gave access to the two rooms. The pool room retains its original bar counter with inlaid top, but was shortened slightly in 2008 at the time of the other changes.

The bar back fittings are original – but modest - with two rows of mirrors and above them a row of fielded panelling.

Two old hand-pumps on the bar have not been used for around two decades. A warning to anyone thinking of visiting: every inch of the walls and the woodwork, including the fielded wall panelling to dado height, the overhead beams and the wood beneath the counter, has all been painted grey."

The WhatPub link is here: WhatPub/Asylum Tavern

The Pub Heritage Group link is here: PHG/Asylum Tavern

The Asylum Tavern featured on the Lunar Odyssey: From the Asylum to the Half Moon: Daytime Crawl of Peckham, Nunhead, Dulwich and Herne Hill on 14 October 2017.

Exterior Interior Bar Counter Pub Sign