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Picture source: T C

The Rose was situated at 86 Fulham Road. This pub closed in 1996 and is now used as a bar/restaurant which was reputedly where Kate Middleton had her hen night.

Source: Mac Booker

A beautifully furnished Victorian terraced pub on the main road. It had a magnificent Edwardian Bass mirror overlooking the front bar which I saw being demolished, my eyes not believing what I was seeing, the day after the pub closed. Used to serve the best pint of London Pride in Chelsea. Was re-opened as a bar called Cactus Blue, which amazingly is still there, proving the fact that there's no accounting for taste.

Robbie Paterson (August 2012)

No longer the Cactus Blue, however still a bar/restaurant.

T C (July 2013)

I worked as a barman there in the summer of 1989 for Barry Cannon. I was an American student on a work visa. Beautiful pub, and I agree, we served the best pint of London Pride (and ESB) in town. Was a live-in pub with a fringe theater. Excellent experience, although I often had “the piss taken out of me” by the regulars.

Dan Gingold (June 2016)

Now reopened as The Hunters Moon.

T C (November 2019)

It’s more than 60 years since I was a regular at the Rose Bar on pay-day evening sessions. I was resident at a London Hostels Association hostel at 25 Onslow Gardens throughout 1962, and the Rose, with Ken the genial bar manager, was a favourite spot to celebrate the temporary end of poverty for many of the hostel residents, young civil servants who’d come from across the country to work in London. I recall sessions of singing rugby songs, Irish rebel songs, music hall and maudlin country & western songs etc; and on less boisterous evenings, darts tournaments between The Hatters (hats worn) and Hairs (no hats). Names of hostellers that come to mind: Bob Lewis and Dave Robins from South Wales, Mike Ollis from Cornwall, Mike Fremantle from Wilts, Messrs Twybell and Hardiment from the North West iirc – wish I could bring to mind more but age, eh! Our rowdy antics were not welcomed for long by the management (or neighbours) in that select area, and it was made clear that we were no longer welcome, maybe sometime in late ‘62, so new haunts were found, and the merry band broke up and moved on to new pastures.

Jim Clay (February 2024)

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