The Harold

The Harold opened in Forest Lodge in 1888 as the Centennial Hotel and picked up the name Lillie Bridge Hotel in 1903. The original three-storey building burned down in 1959. Its rebuild became Harold Park Hotel, a 1960s-to-1990s institution for 'Politics in the Pub', 'Poets in the Pub' and stand-up comedy, before closing in 2002. The current building reopened in 2007, and in 2022 the Good Beer Company took the venue over from Oscars and rebranded it simply The Harold. The kitchen runs a gastropub menu with craft beer and cocktails to match, and the old comedy-room heritage continues upstairs with live theatre, opera and stand-up.

Dogs are welcome on the outdoor seating. The venue's own site calls it 'a family-welcoming, dog-friendly pub where kids, pups and grown-ups alike feel at home', which lines up with a Forest Lodge crowd that has known this corner across four different iterations.