The Castle, North Acton, W3

This is a massive edifice of a pub near to North Acton Station, and is well named as The Castle as it has an enormous turret as its exterior centrepiece. It's covered in brewer's Tudor, and is built to a scale that was intended to dominate the junction at which it sits. Inside it's as large as its exterior suggest. It's largely opened up, but there remain three fairly distinct areas, and the smaller of the three at the back on the left can be separated to some extent as some concertina screening is still in place. This room still has some fielded panelling on the walls, as well as a nice tiled fireplace with a wooden surround. In my opinion this is the nicest of the three rooms here. But overall in the pub there are too many tall tables/tall stools and bucket armchairs for my liking, But I'm sure I'm in the minority as they seemed quite popular. As this is a Fuller's pub in Fuller's heartland there are no surprises as to the the ales available. Just the pair of London Pride (£3.80 a pint) and Oliver's Island were on, with Jack Frost having just finished. The food here is a bit cheaper than at the Fox & Goose that I had visited earlier, with sarnies around £5 - £6, and main courses around £9 - £11. It was very busy when I visited on Thursday afternoon, but I guess that might be a Christmas phenomenon. This is an OK pub, without being anything special.

Substantial Fuller's house near North Acton station in a full-on brewer's Tudor style. It retains its island bar with two decent-sized seating areas and a separate dining room beyond. Plenty of dark wood-panelling and other original features, including a fine fireplace in one bar. Also has some wooden benches out front and a patio beer garden at the back. Pride, the seasonal Red Fox (£3.90) and Weird Beard Mariana Trench as a guest from a trio of three-handpump banks.

Official site of The Castle - www.castlenorthacton.co.uk

Official site of The Castle - www.castlenorthacton.co.uk

This large Fullers pub opposite North Acton station was built in 1938 and retains some interesting historic features, despite having been mostly opened out into one single room. The pub is laid out around a central servery, with a number of formerly separate rooms still discernible as you complete your circuit around the bar. Dark wood is the preferred medium here, with the floorboards, wall panels and servery all sporting plenty of it and only some warm-shaded upper sections of wall offering an alternative. The walls have been further brightened up by a series of collages which include images of street art, stickers and posters from various bands and another collage of what appeared to be former footballers (although I only saw this from a distance, so I may have got the wrong end of the stick). The dark wood is certainly not sacred, as along with these obstructions to the wood panels, there were also various craft beer bottle labels stuck to the bar canopy. There is limited seating in the front part of the pub, with lots of space given over to vertical drinking, but as you make your way to the rear, more options appear, including on a raised seating section to the rear left and in front of a smart fireplace to the rear right. Behind the fireplace there is a raised carpeted lounge/function room full of tub chair and armchair seating. Walls are again dark wood panelled with white anglypta uppers, whilst the fireplace, which shares a chimney breast with the fireplace in the adjacent room, has an etched glass mirror above and some semi-crushed beer cans and aerosol spray paint tins on its mantelpiece, alongside another street art image. Windows here have stained glass rose motifs and the walls are decorated with breweriana and old 90's German gig posters. A stack of board games was available in the far corner and the pub has a paved garden through the doors behind the bar. As I was leaving, the bar staff turned a couple of TV screens on so the afternoon's England football fixture could be shown. When I got to the bar, I could only see Fullers London Pride (£3.70) available, so I ordered a pint from the cheery barmaid, which was in very good shape and worthy of their recent Good Beer Guide listing. However, moving to the rear of the bar, another set of handpulls had a second guest beer available, although I forgot to note what it was. This is a part of town I doubt I'd ever have visited were it not for my attention being drawn to this pub, as it's in an area that seems a little isolated and not served by many other pubs. Thankfully, I thought the place was pretty good, providing me with a good pint of Pride in pleasant, traditional surroundings, so the journey out here wasn't wasted. A good asset to the local area and worth calling in if you're passing.