One of southeast London’s best-known pubs is planning to extend into a nearby shop unit.

The Fox and Firkin in Lewisham High Street has taken over a closed-down antiques shop two doors along the road, and hopes to open a food court and café. 

An application to Lewisham Council to install extractor fans on the old Black-Heath Antiques building says that it plans “a high street-facing café serving breakfast up until lunchtime and a street food-style restaurant with open kitchen alongside a small bar that will operate from the afternoon into the evening”.

Earlier this year an application for a licence to serve alcohol from 10am to 2am, under the name Firkin Tap Room, was submitted to the council.

The new outlet would be accessible from the pub’s beer garden and would provide a more consistent offering than the street food pop-ups that currently operate there, the application says.

Black-Heath Antiques shop front
The pub has taken over a former antiques shop. Image: The Greenwich Wire

The plans to expand the Fox and Firkin’s business come just days after an application was filed to turn the nearby Ravensbourne Arms into a ten-room HMO, claiming the site was not viable.

Once known as The Black Bull, the Fox and Firkin has reinvented itself into a hugely successful pub and music venue over the past two decades, with a train carriage in its expanded back garden.

The pub became the Fox and Firkin in the early 1980s when entrepreneur David Bruce opened the second in his chain of Firkin pubs there, brewing real ale on the premises at a time when traditional beer was in steep decline. Brewing stopped after the chain was bought out at the end of the decade and expanded across the country. While most of the pubs eventually lost their alliterative Firkin names, the Fox and Firkin remained. 

There is now a modern-day Firkin Brewery based close to the pub, with beers including a Ladywell Pale. 

More information on the expansion plan is on the Lewisham Council planning website.

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