We're hosting Lucky Cow Champions of Champions Quiz on THURSDAY 11th AUGUST to find the best quiz team in South London!
Don't forget to join us every first Tuesday of the month for more quiz nights!
Join us in our annual celebration of Jamaica's independence this Saturday 6th August 2022 - 60th year of home rule All Welcome. Wear your colours.
Blossoms Kitchen in-house with authentic JA Cuisine.
DJ Shicka.
EVERY WEDNESDAY join us at the Golden Anchor for our Open Mic Nights. Hosted by Mick.
7.30pm start.
All are welcome!
Happy Hour all week up until 9pm!
Choose between Margaritas, Mojitos and Strawberry Daiquiris.
Come down to the Golden Anchor where we will be streaming the Premier League live just for you!
Your favourite Mash menu is back. Every Wednesday come on down to get some great bangers and mash!
We are looking for driven people to join our strong team for all bar related operations including supervisors, assists and kitchen staff!
If this is you please get in touch.
We are looking for an experienced weekend Chef to start immediately. We have a lovely bar team and our kitchen is used by a few pop ups. We are big on Brunch!
We’re based in Nunhead SE15
£12 per hour minimum start
Please email if you are interested: thegoldenanchor@hotmail.com
Because we love our community & we want to open our spaces to all of you! We are doing an Open Call to Artist in Nunhead/Peckham. Write to us to enquiries@goldenanchor.co.uk and tell us more about! We would love to host your exhibition, your book reading, your poet improv or anything you feel like expressing! We would love to have you!
OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK!
Book now space still available.
Chaffing units available for hire.
Available all week. Book now.
The Golden Touch. Legendary, local & known for its Music Night. The Anchor is Lana Bewry & her resiliency can be seen in every detail. We will tell you the tales with the voices of many, the ones that have written about us, featured us in tv shows & more.
Thank you all for such great support x
/ˈsəʊʃəlʌɪt/
noun
If you’d just come here from Jamaica, the Golden Anchor was a place you could come in, meet family and friends, and maybe get work in the building trade. On the other hand, I remember walking into pubs in Bermondsey at that time and being the only black person there.By 1998, Nelson had passed away and the new landlords, who were Jamaican, were looking for someone to take over as the licensee. When I started, there were drug boys who effectively ran the pub; it was why the other people had given it up. They would be getting their clients in here, not buying drinks. It wasn’t nice at all, but I had to front them out, little me against those boys. My brother helped me and, with some prayers, we got rid of them.
Going for Growth
But for our Lana the cup is always half full: "People in the industry have had to adapt and reinvent themselves"..."...I almost gave up, but held on and everything changed for the better. I've got a new normal now: people are booking tables in the pub and I love it. I feel very lucky to even be open"..
Legendary local the Golden Anchor is known for its music nights, tasty Caribbean food and community vibe. We popped in for a chat with landlady Lana Bewry, who has run the pub for 20 years.
From outside, the Golden Anchor on Nunhead’s Evelina Road looks like a typical neighbourhood corner pub – albeit with some cheerful pot plants out the front. But step through the door and it becomes clear this place is something a bit different. With a tropical palm tree mural on the wall behind her, and serving up a cool glass of Ting, landlady Lana Bewry (pictured above with her partner Greg) has run the Caribbean-flavoured pub for 20 years now.
Before that the landlady, who grew up on Queen’s Road, worked behind the bar there on Sundays and at other Peckham and Nunhead pubs too, while working for Royal Bank of Scotland during the week.
“It looked so dirty and dingy compared to the last time I’d seen it,” she says of the moment she stepped into the pub she’d just taken over. “It felt like we spent months cleaning it. I wanted it clean, full of customers and full of people dancing.”She ripped up the old, sticky carpet – “I remembered there was a lovely parquet floor underneath. I pulled up the carpet and there it was” – and bringing the pub back up to her own high standards, as well as setting up a kitchen serving authentic Caribbean cuisine.
Been So Long with Michaela Coel
The pub has recently been dressed up for another reason: it was used as a film set for an upcoming British movie called Been So Long. The film, which stars BAFTA-winning actress Michaela Coel (of hit comedy “Chewing Gum” fame), used the Golden Anchor as a classic London venue. The crew transformed the pub’s back room into an 1980s-style cocktail bar: “It was a really great experience,” says Lana.
A film by Marcus Hessenberg with Elam Forrester.
Dominoes is a game that many recognise but not everyone knows how to play. In many cultures around the world, the game is hugely popular and in the West Indies it is common place. Filmed at the amazing Golden Anchor, Nunhead, a Caribbean pub in the quiet Victorian back streets of Nunhead near Nunhead Green, I meet regulars who play the game regularly and interview them about the game and the links to Caribbean culture.
The UK is home to a huge amount of people from the West Indies, especially London, due to the links with the old Empire and the Windrush generation that originally moved here in the 50s. West Indian culture has had a huge affect on British culture ever since and London was introduced to a whole new culture. South London became a home to those who came from Jamaica and neighbouring islands, with Brixton and Peckham becoming hubs for Caribbean food and culture. Electric Avenue in Brixton was turned into a song by Eddie Grant, Bob Marley was a regular to the area and the arcades started selling all the foods from home. Peckham turned from a British style high street to a West Indian and West Indies market place.
The Golden Anchor is a pub that reflects Nunhead and Peckham - a mix of cultures blending together with men playing dominoes in the corner as the other locals come and eat and drink. The area is known to be gentrifying and with that comes the risk of losing the culture that has been formed over the last 50 years, as money comes in and purchases land, hopefully the two worlds can coexist.
Thanks to the amazing Lana Bewry at the Golden Anchor, Nunhead and the domino players, Chicka, Godfrey, Jean, Paul and Greg.
Filmed with the current Covid regulations at the time of filming.
A film by Marcus Hessenberg with Elam Forrester.
Music by The Dubwegians - Track: Too Hot Dub (https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Th...) See more at: www.hessenbergproductions.com
‘I’d never seen another black person running a pub until a couple of years ago’
11-Aug-2020 By Stuart Stone
In light of the Black Lives Matter movement, The Morning Advertiser (MA) asked how well the pub industry reflects the society it serves.
For the last 20 years, pubs have been closing down at an alarming rate. Concerned by a crisis in the industry he loves, Tom Kerridge sets out on a mission to revive struggling pubs. Tom travels into London to find a third pub to support. Times have been tough for the capital’s pubs, with an average of 80 closing every year since 2000. Tom arrives in the south London neighbourhood of Nunhead to meet Lana, leaseholder at The Golden Anchor. She is struggling to pay the bills, and unless she can pull in more punters, The Golden Anchor will close. Tom learns more about the pub when he joins a game of the dominos with the regulars.
It is early 2020, and Tom Kerridge is adding a fourth pub to the list of businesses he wants to support. In south London’s Golden Anchor, Tom needs to convince Lana to push ahead with the modernisation of her once-thriving pub. For inspiration, he takes her to meet the enterprising landlord of the nearby Prince of Peckham pub and enlists Eve, his sister-in-law, to push ahead with refurbishments. Just as the hard work in all four pubs seems to be paying off, the pandemic strikes Britain. Now every pub in Britain faces a fight for survival.
Coronavirus is spreading and the British public are told to stay away from pubs. Tom and the landlords he has been supporting face a moral dilemma. Do they keep trying to trade or do they close their doors to fight the virus? On Friday 20 March 2020, the decision is taken out of their hands when the prime minister tells all pubs to close until further notice. Tom started this journey to save four pubs from going under - now every pub in Britain, his own included, finds themselves in a fight for survival. Finally, after 106 days closed, Britain’s pubs are allowed to welcome back customers. For roughly half of Britain’s pubs that do reopen, it is cause for celebration. But even they aren’t out of the woods yet.
Bring & Green, Our Front Garden can hold up to 12 tables & more than 36 people! with two areas than can be reserved separately for a day event.
If you are looking for a bright & colourful well cosy & comfy, this is the perfect place for a diner date & those long time planned catch ups.
Is there more to say?
We have put much love in every detail
Hosting over 50 covers seated & open for parties
Bright days and Comfy evenings
