Sam Cullen
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Articles by Sam Cullen
10 of London's greatest lost pubs - and the stories behind them
Though the government is expected to do a U-turn on business rates for pubs, hospitality is still fearsomely in decline: more than 2,000 businesses are expected to close over 2026. Pubs are one of the UK’s great institutions: the social leveller, the refuge in restless times, the dance floor in times of celebration. In 2025, it was reported one pub across the country closed every day, and while in London things weren’t quite so bad, there’s no denying things were still pretty bleak.
Five Wonderful New Pubs That (Re)Opened In London This Year
By Sam Cullen Last Updated 05 September 2025 Sam Cullen Five Wonderful New Pubs That (Re)Opened In London This Year Along with some old pubs making a reappearance, so are one or two old beer brands... Image: Londonist It feels we're never far away from another story about pub closures, or predictions of gloomy times ahead for our beloved boozers. Granted, the 2020s has been a tough time for the industry, in keeping with the economy in general.
London's Lost Pubs | Londonist
By Sam Cullen Last Updated 28 January 2025 Sam Cullen Book Mourns London's Lost Pubs The George and Dragon, which has a swimming pool in the garden. Image: Ewan Munro In a new book — London's Lost Pubs — Sam Cullen goes on a epic crawl of over 200 of the most interesting erstwhile boozers, discovering swimming pools, skulls and the Sex Pistols along the way. Here, the author picks 10 of his favourite pubs that have been lost within the last 25 years. 1.
10 of London's greatest lost pubs — and the stories behind them
Sam Cullen Though the government is expected to do a U-turn on business rates for pubs , hospitality is still fearsomely in decline: more than 2,000 businesses are expected to close over 2026. Pubs are one of the UK's great institutions: the social leveller, the refuge in restless times, the dance floor in times of celebration. In 2025, it was reported one pub across the country closed every day, and while in London things weren't quite so bad, there's no denying things were still pretty bleak .
10 of London's greatest lost pubs - and the stories behind them
Pubs, we’re told, are in decline in an alarming way: London is down to around 3,400 these days, with 34 closures every month in 2024. This year, boozers look to be fighting back: this month, a revival of the Knave of Clubs in Shoreditch was announced, 30 years after it first closed. And looking back at last year, the restaurant hit of the year? Well, it wasn’t a restaurant at all, but a pub — the Devonshire.
What's in a London Pub Name?
By James Potts and Sam Cullen What links a champion bare-knuckle boxer, a pioneering general who inspired the invention of Ordnance Survey maps and a runaway cat? They’ve all given their names to London pubs! This book covers over 650 pub names across all 32 London boroughs as well as the City of London, revealing the stories of Elizabethan actors, puritanical plotters, Titanic survivors, treasured cuddly toys and many many more...
Are You Required to File an Underused Housing Tax Return?
On June 9, 2022, the Underused Housing Tax Act (“UHTA”) received Royal Assent and took effect on January 1, 2022. The Underused Housing Tax (“UHT”) is designed to levy a 1% annual tax on non-resident, non-Canadian persons owning a vacant residential property. Despite this targeted objective, the UHTA imposes a tax return filing obligation on a broad swath of persons who are not ultimately liable to pay UHT.
"We Went In Search Of The Meaning Behind 650 London Pub Names"
Sam Cullen, co-author of What's in a London Pub Name? tells us how he set out to find the meaning behind the names of 650 pubs across the capital. The project began on a lockdown walk. Myself and James Potts [the book's co-author] were thinking about all the weird and wonderful pub names in London. Some, we knew the stories behind, such as the Town of Ramsgate in Wapping (named after fisherman from the Kent coastal resort stopping here on their way into London). But there were plenty we didn't.
The Second King's Cross Station That Was Never Built
St Pancras station is without question a triumph. The palatial Victorian terminus befits exotic rail trips to Paris and Amsterdam. But were it not for an 11th hour change of heart, your Eurostar weekend break would have started next door, at King's Cross station. When the Channel Tunnel was first being planned, British Rail calculated it could run the service on existing rail infrastructure and needed only one station, Waterloo, to do so.
18 London Buses That Take You Beyond The M25
For more transport chat, join our popular Facebook group, Londonist Roundel Ramblings. When recently travelling on London’s least frequent bus (the 347, if you're curious), I was intrigued to discover it ventured beyond the M25 for part of its journey. It got me thinking: how many other London buses do this?
The London Bus Route Where Everyone Thanks The Driver
By Sam Cullen Last edited 72 months ago Last Updated 21 January 2019 Sam Cullen The London Bus Route Where Everyone Thanks The Driver "Thank you driver". "Cheers mate". "Thanks driver." And so it begins Not what you expect to hear on a London bus route, but that’s exactly what's repeatedly uttered on the 347, from Ockendon to Romford. This is London's least frequent bus route. The service runs four times a day, Monday to Saturday — a bus every two hours, 9am till 3pm. That's just 24 buses a week.
A Circle Line Pub Crawl
If the Circle line starts to look like this, it's time to go home. Image: Shutterstock Over three years, I went on the hunt for the best pub in the immediate area of each of the 270 London Underground stations. Using this knowledge, I've pulled together a Circle line pub crawl. At 28 stops, this crawl was already long enough, before TfL extended the Circle line down to Hammersmith in December 2009. That brings it up to 35 in total. Gulp.
When Part Of Peckham Was Almost Obliterated For The Channel Tunnel
Sam Cullen When Part Of Peckham Was Almost Obliterated For The Channel Tunnel Photo: Tim Parker When thinking of Eurostar and London, the iconic terminus at St Pancras — or perhaps its former home at Waterloo — spring to mind. Few, if any, would think of Peckham. However, this area of south London almost became the site of a major junction for the high speed continental link. It would have changed the nature of the area forever.
A Trip To The Pubs At London's Extremes
There are all sorts of guides to London pubs but as far as we can find, nobody has ever pinpointed the city's frontier pubs: those places which are the furthest north, south, east and west. To add a bit of fun to the task, we decided to visit them all in one day. Taking public transport meant an average of a two-hour journey time between each spot. With an average distance of around 25 miles between each, it's certainly a drawn-out crawl.
What's Really Happening Alongside The Westway?
The Westway must rank as one of the capital’s most notorious roads. Opening in 1970, the raised concrete motorway cut through densely populated swathes of west London, causing furious protests from local residents. It subsequently provided inspiration for the dystopian visions of author JG Ballard and cropped up in songs by The Clash and Blur. But what’s life like along the Westway now? We walked alongside a two mile stretch of the elevated road to find out.
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