A football ground with a pub on every corner
Brentford Football Club played at Griffin Park from 1904 until the summer of 2020. The ground was boxed in by four ordinary residential streets, Braemar Road, Brook Road South, New Road and Ealing Road, and at each of the four corners where those streets met there stood a pub. For decades it was repeated, with some pride, that this was the only football ground in England with a pub on every corner, and nobody ever seriously disputed it.
The name came from a pub as well. The Griffin, on one of those corners, took its name from the griffin in the emblem of Fuller's brewery down the road at Chiswick, and the brewery had at one time owned the orchard on which the ground was built. So the ground was named after the pub, which was named after the brewery's sign, which is about as Brentford a piece of history as it is possible to find.
What happened to the ground
In 2020 the club moved to its new stadium by Kew Bridge, off Lionel Road, and Griffin Park's last matches were played without a crowd. The stands were demolished soon afterwards. A housing scheme has since been given planning permission for the site, with a new public green laid out roughly where the pitch used to be, so that the rectangle at the centre of those four streets stays open ground of a kind.
The terraced streets around it have hardly changed at all. They are quiet, residential and a few minutes' walk from Brentford station, and on a weekday evening it is difficult to imagine twelve thousand people once squeezing through them on a Saturday. The pubs, which lost their busiest trade overnight, have had to survive as locals, and three of the four have managed it.
The Griffin, on Brook Road South
The Griffin stands where Brook Road South meets Braemar Road, an 1890s building with a tower-like corner that makes it the most striking of the four. It is a friendly local now, comfortable inside, with a small shaded garden at the back, and it had a moment of fame as a location in the football film Green Street.
It is the right place to start. Arrive early in the evening, take a table by the window, and you are looking at the street where the queues for the Braemar Road stand used to form. The regulars will tell you about the old ground if you ask, and quite possibly if you do not.
The New Inn and The Brook
The New Inn sits on the corner of New Road and Ealing Road, a traditional corner pub with two bar areas and the unhurried feel of a place that has seen out a great many seasons and expects to see out a few more. It is the most straightforwardly pubby of the three, which is meant as a compliment.
The Brook, on the corner of New Road and Brook Road South, was the Royal Oak for most of its life and reopened under its present name as an independent in 2019. It has rotating craft beers, a well kept garden with lights strung through it, live music on some nights and food that goes further than crisps. It has been known to close for a spell in the depths of winter, so check before a January visit. In summer its garden is the best place on the whole circuit to finish.
The corner that closed
The fourth corner belonged to the Princess Royal on Ealing Road. It closed in March 2020, a few months before the club left, never reopened, and has since been turned over to another use entirely. There is no reopening to wait for.
Three corners out of four is a respectable result for pubs that lost a football crowd overnight, and the story is better told honestly. Walk past the fourth corner, stop for a moment, and move on. It is part of the history of the place even if it no longer serves anybody a pint.
Walking the corners slowly
The whole circuit is a few hundred yards, and that is the point. This is not a crawl in the Soho sense, with a destination and a deadline. It is three good pubs a couple of minutes apart, which means you can spend an hour in whichever one suits the evening and only move when the conversation wants a change of scene.
A sensible order is The Griffin first while it is still light, The New Inn for the middle of the evening, and The Brook to finish, in its garden if the weather allows. Dinner can happen in any of them, or a short walk south brings you to the High Street and the canal. From there the Thames is minutes away, and the riverside walk from Brentford Lock to Isleworth makes a very good afternoon to put in front of an evening like this one.
On home match days at the new stadium the whole of Brentford gets busier, and it is worth knowing the fixture list before choosing a date. On any other evening these streets are about as quiet as TW8 ever gets.
Booking an evening round the corners
The booking that fits is a night out that runs to the last train. Three hours at £700 covers the three corners and a proper meal with no clock consulted. Four hours at £900 makes room for an early walk by the river first. She receives her fee from you face to face at the start, and whatever goes across the bar is yours to settle, as it would be with any other guest.
Danielle is anchored in Brentford and plans around match nights rather than against them; she has long black hair, appears on the raven haired page, and is the steady, observant one in any room. Tina, three minutes from Brentford station, is quick, direct and fond of the High Street's odder corners. Patricia is quieter, warms up over the course of an evening, and will turn a conversation about a film into an extra hour without trying.
Guests staying out at Isleworth or up at Osterley usually arrive by car or on the Waterloo line to Brentford, which leaves them a few minutes' walk from the first corner.
Filed under: most of the names in this note also sit on the late twenties shortlist in the panel.