New £2.8m Wetherspoon pub to open at Waterloo Station | UK | News
Wetherspoon is set to open a brand new pub in Britain’s third busiest railway station next week. The company has spent a whopping £2.8 million developing the pub, which is called The Lion & the Unicorn, and the pub group has announced that it will open on Tuesday 3 September.
The Lion & the Unicorn pub, located in the former Eurostar terminus at London’s Waterloo station, will be open from 7:30am to midnight Monday to Thursday, 7:30am to 1am Friday and Saturday, and 7:30am to midnight Sunday. The opening comes after Brewdog launched its flagship site at the station in 2022, which was at the time the UK’s largest pub.
Food will be served throughout the day, from opening until 11pm every day. The pub, which has created 70 new jobs, will specialise in traditional craft beers and ciders, as well as world beers, offering a wide range of different beers on tap, as well as bottled beers, including those from local and regional brewers.
It will be open for family meals, with children, accompanied by an adult, welcome in the pub until 9pm, throughout the week. The pub will also be wheelchair accessible and will have specially adapted toilets for disabled people.
The interior design of the new pub is inspired by the historic architecture that made the Lion And Unicorn Pavilion a fan favourite at the 1951 Festival of Britain. The festival’s attitude towards light, colour and innovation (the complete opposite of pre-1951 Britain) has been adopted in the design, which is seen as a hybrid of traditionalism and modernity.
Historic photographs and details of local history, as well as artwork and images of local scenes and characters from the area, are also on display in the pub, some from collaborations with local artists, as well as the Southbank Centre, with other links to the key figures who brought the 1951 festival to life.
Regional Manager Barry Brewster said: “My team and I are looking forward to welcoming customers to the Lion & the Unicorn and we are confident the pub will be a great addition to Waterloo’s social scene.”
Wetherspoons has been reducing the size of its pub estate in recent years, selling or handing over the leases of 26 of its properties since November. However, the group stressed last month that it still aims to grow its portfolio from 801 properties to 1,000 sites in the longer term.
