Duke's Head, Crayford

The Duke's Head still has some of its original 1926 fittings, including a plain panelled bar counter creating the three-sided servery, three fireplaces and imitation wood panelling on the walls.

This pleasant, small pub is a 1926 rebuild in the loose Tudor style that was so popular for pubs at the time; the exterior having thin red bricks below and half-timbering above. The Tudor theme continues inside with three brick fireplaces, exposed ceiling joists, and walls ‘panelled’ to two-thirds height: look carefully and you will realise the infill between the timber uprights is artificial, resin-based sheeting made to look like wood (very popular in the Twenties to create a sense of antiquity on the cheap). Now opened up the pub originally had three rooms: a smallish space on the right entered through the front door is clearly distinguishable as small remnants remain of the partition separating it from the main bar on the left. The main bar, rather less obviously, had two spaces, one entered, as now, through the side door and its internal porch on the left, and another from a (now blocked) entrance on the corner. Otherwise modest original fittings include parts of the bar-back, and the etched window glass with geometrical patterning is probably also originally from 1926.