Tooting Tavern

From Summerofweird

The "local" for the Summer of Wierd characters, this pub, nestled halfway between Tooting Broadway and Colliers Wood tube stations, offered an alternative to the mainstream drinking establishment closer to the stations.

Its location on the periphery was probably the reason it attracted the weird and wonderful denziens, artists and outcasts.

In the 1990's it was renamed the Freedom and Firkin, then, as The George, seemed to go into terminal decline.

A recent change of ownership and a further re-naming as The Garden House has turned this around, although the re-vamp, along with the accompanying gentrification of Colliers Wood and Tooting, seems to have eradicated all traces of the nascent bohemian scene that centered on the pub at the end of the 20th century.