London Pubs Group

Campaign for Real Ale

Campaign for Real Ale

Marquis Cornwallis

31 Marchmont Street
Bloomsbury
WC1N 1AP

Like the George IV, this pub is not a listed building but it has elegant windows and several pillars survive in the interior. It was built in 1804 and owned by Hoare & Co, then from 1933 Charrington, and from 1967 Bass Charrington. It reopened in 1996 after a short closure. It had a spell from 1997 as the Goose & Granite, from 2001 the Goose at Bloomsbury, reverting to its original name in 2007, initially miswritten as the Marquis of Cornwallis. It is a four-storey building in orange brick, with white stone trims and a sea-blue ground floor exterior. It has a fairly spacious interior with a front-facing bar in the centre of the back wall. A decent refurbishment was carried out in 2007 but little in the way of period features remain. It has a high blocky cream ceiling with some plasterwork, four thin green and gold supporting pillars with capitals, two external walls in cream with tall arched windows and stripped wooden panelling, a nice internal porch in bottle green and glass, pastel green internal walls with stripped wood panelling up to picture rail, dark brown painted wood panelling under the bar counter, fireplace with dark wood surround, stripped floorboards with some multicoloured tiles by the bar, two wood booths at the rear, and a real jumble of furniture from brown leather settees to formica tables. The Drawing Room upstairs is medium-sized and square, with a high cream Anaglypta ceiling, and sky blue walls with blue trims, its own bar, bare floorboards, and multicoloured tiles by the bar.

The Marquis Cornwallis features on the A Hoare-ing We Shall Go: Evening Crawl of Hoare & Co Pubs on 21 August 2019.

The WhatPub link is here: WhatPub/Marquis Cornwallis