Pubs with Fireplaces in London: Where to Warm Up Now the Clocks Have Gone Back

CAMRA reckons there has been a King's Head on Teddington High Street since 1689, and it was one of three local pubs named in the Teddington Enclosure Award of 1800. The building has been rebuilt since, and today it wears its Victorian bones as an upmarket gastropub: a burgundy-red main bar, a powder-blue room behind it, snugs worth claiming early and log fires to claim them by. It was the original White Brasserie pub in Raymond Blanc's chain, and the cooking still reads as British with a French twist. Sunday is when it really earns its place here. The roast comes with bottomless trimmings and is served all day, which suits afternoons that turn dark before pudding. Dogs get a dinner of their own, and on Twickenham match days it catches fans on the way home. Our pick for a booked fireside Sunday lunch that drifts happily into the evening.

Tucked into the backstreets between Hammersmith and Shepherd's Bush, a short walk from Ravenscourt Park, the Thatched House has gone back to the name it carried longest, and it feels like a pub that knows exactly what it is. The front room is the traditional part, and this time of year it belongs to the sofas gathered around a real log fire. Behind it sits a light, glass-roofed dining room, then a walled garden that can wait until spring. It's an independent house with changing real ales, often from London breweries, and it's the kind of local where families, dogs and regulars share the space without fuss; on a charity quiz night it fills right up. Our listing shows it closed on Fridays, so check its page before you set off. Go here when the whole plan is a sofa, a pint and nowhere else to be.

The Castle can trace itself back to 1716, but the pub you walk into on West Street was rebuilt in 1901 and has barely been touched since. It's Grade II listed and holds three stars on CAMRA's National Inventory, which means an interior of outstanding national importance: most of the original layout and fittings survive, including the Red Room and a screen with a low service door. Wooden floors and original lamps catch the light from fires CAMRA describes as coal-burning. It's a Fuller's house with real ales on rotation, a short walk from Harrow School, and friendly enough that families settle in over wood-fired pizza or a Sunday roast while regulars hold the bar. Monday brings folk music and Tuesday a quiz. The 'secret' garden up the steps beside the pub can wait for spring. Outer north-west London's strongest case for a fire with the family in tow.

Built in the 1860s and named after the British victory at Magdala in 1868, 'The Magy' to locals carries one of London's darkest pub stories. On Easter Sunday 1955, Ruth Ellis shot her lover David Blakely outside, and she became the last woman hanged in Britain. Legend has it bullet holes can still be seen in the walls. After seven dark years from 2014, a careful restoration brought it back in 2021 as a pub with decent food rather than a restaurant. It now has two personalities: a light left-hand bar with an open kitchen, and the one you want tonight, the vintage right-hand bar with its wood panelling, curved servery, stained glass and fireplace. Seven cask ales and Sunday roasts keep people lingering, and Hampstead Heath station is a few yards away. Pair it with a muddy Heath walk and you have the most complete autumn afternoon on this list.

The Plume of Feathers says it opened in 1691 as the Prince of Wales, which would make it Greenwich's oldest pub. A widow, Jane Whitall, gave it its current name by 1726. For a few years it sat on the main road, until the Park Ranger, Lord Romney, built a new one further north in 1699, leaving it on quiet Park Vista, one of the prettiest streets in town. In 1856 a landlord was charged with receiving paving stones stolen from the street outside. Inside, it's a single, snug room, short on space and big on character, built around an original Claygate fireplace and hung with maritime memorabilia and old paintings. Family-run for more than 30 years, it pours Harvey's Sussex Best beside Greenwich Park. Our listed hours are short on some days, so check before travelling. Worth crossing the river for if period character matters as much as the flames.

This towering Victorian corner pub on Kitto Road started life in the 1890s as the Duke of Albany, one of hundreds of houses in Watney's estate. Today it's Skehans, one of South London's few remaining independent, family-run pubs, owned by a Limerick man, Bryan Fitzsimons. The single high-ceilinged room, with its L-shaped bar and open floor, somehow holds pensioners, local bands, fashion students and cheerful groups of lads all at once, and Time Out put it top of its 2023 list of London's best pubs. In winter the wood-burning stove warms the front bar, and the move is a Sunday-night folk session right beside it. When hunger hits, Chai's Garden serves Thai food out of the old coach house from 5pm. Choose it for a fire with a soundtrack rather than a hush.

Leather armchairs, shelves of old bottles and books, unobtrusive music and a real fire: the Eagle Ale House on Chatham Road, just off Northcote Road, feels like a well-read uncle's sitting room that happens to pour excellent beer. It's a cosy local in the truest sense and a bastion for small-brewery cask and keg beers from near and far, with one handpump kept for cider. The beer people have noticed. It was South West London CAMRA's Pub of the Year in 2012 and 2014 and appeared on the cover of the Good Beer Guide 2015. Weekday doors open at 3pm, so think of it as an after-work stop, and the heated marquee in the garden shelters smokers and dog walkers. For quiet conversation over a proper pint, nothing else on the list comes close.

Five minutes from Ealing Broadway but well away from its crowds, The Wheatsheaf on Haven Lane is a 1950s pub that's deceptively big once you're inside. There's a small public bar at the front, a main bar where the big screen lives and an open-plan area at the back. When Fuller's took it on in 2023, the refurbishment lightened the room but kept the classic wood and the rustic saloon bar, and crucially the open fire. That makes it a pub of two moods. Board games and a pint of London Pride by the fire suit a slow evening, while the Monday quiz from 8pm and Sky and TNT across eight screens bring the noise. Sunday roasts and homemade puddings give families and dog walkers a reason to stay. The one to pick if half your group wants the fire and the other half wants the football.