The Rochester Castle

Great venue for an authentic stoke newington experience. The diverse mix of customers represents everything good about the area.
Sure, it’s a whether spoons and that brings with it the usual ups and downs (namely cheap prices and the occasional nutter), but I can’t think of many better places to meet up with your mates at the start of an night and see where the mood takes you.
Two thumbs up from me! Staff are v tolerant and there’s a beer garden too!

Like every wetherspoons place The Rochester Castle is cheap for eating and drinking. The ambient is mixed, and among the regulars, you will find young people having a cheap pint.
The best deal if you want to eat is the burger plus pint combo. It is less than seven quid!

Went there yesterday for the first time in years, hasn’t changed much.
As others have commented, the service is very slooooow, four behind the ramp and only one, the duty manager, seemed to know what she was doing.
The beer was in good nick, and £2.15 for both Oakham JHB and Kelham Island Pale Rider, no complaints about that. However the place was littered with glasses, bottles, plates and cutlery. It was also populated by Stokie’s more ” interesting ” characters.

Come to Stoke Newington and you think that the only people that like here are yummy mummies and Shoreditch media types who have moved the mile up the road to get more square footage on their live-​work units, because these are the type of people that you see on the streets.
No. Big no. You are wrong. Very wrong.
There are plenty of boozy old men (and women — who look mostly like men!) in the area too. You just don’t see them on the streets too often as they all seem to spend the majority of their entire days in The Roch.
If there was ever a pub to go in when you were feeling the need to be the youngest, hottest person in the room, then this really is the place for you.
Cheapest drinks in Stoke, so that’s a good thing. Well, we can’t all afford The Three Crowns prices everyday can we??? The staff are all pretty friendly too. As are the customers, but that’s probably because they haven’t seen a women who doesn’t have to tuck her tits into her knickers for a good decade or two.

This place is awesome! I mean, not in that great service, great atmosphere sort of way. But in the very cheap food and drink sort of way. And since liqour in the UK is so ridiculously priced, this is a must for anyone on a shoestring.

Dec 2009 update
Came here for the Wetherspoon’s beer festival last month and was pleasently surprised. There were some very nice beers and the service was quick this time… so I am adding a star
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May 2009
Not so obviously a Wetherspoons by the layout but very much a Wetherspoons based on the clientele. I hate using the term ‘old mans pub’ because its not the nicest term to use and some of my favourite pubs would fall into that category, but that’s the term that most people will understand. If someone knows a nicer way to conjure this image please let me know.
I was impressed by the range of ales and the 99p courage best bitter. I was not impressed by the service. I would rather pay a bit more and not have to wait for over 5 minutes to get my drink.
Bit of trivia for you there has been a pub on this site since 1702. Originally the Green Dragon, which is a name I prefer, but the bloke who built the current incarnation was from Rochester so the new, less mythical, name was born. Longevity does not neccesarily mean quality.

Traditional local pubs are few and far between nowadays, done in by changing demographics and consumer expectations, cheap continental booze drunk at home, and the most recent nail in the coffin, the smoking ban instigated by our puritanical left wing rulers.
Of course, there are still plenty of customers for the traditional local pub, but nowadays they have to shuffle further from home, grumbling under their breath all the way, to what I would term a super-​local.
The Rochester is the poster child of super-​local pubs. Bigger than the traditional local, but like a traditional local there is a mixed bag of punters depending on time of day, day of the week and season. The foundation of the Rochester’s clientele is the all day drinker, typically male, whose lifestyle is made possible, I surmise, by Britain’s generous state pensions and job seekers allowances, coupled with the fiercely competitive pricing policy that Tim Martin has followed throughout the Wetherspoon estate.
Nicely ornamented original interior. Value for money Wetherspoons fare is served.
Once whilst dining at the Rochester on a midweek evening, a fight broke out amongst a large group of fellow diners, of mixed age groups and both genders, at a neighboring table. Stools flew across the room. Blows were traded. Sensibly, the staff retreated to safety behind the bar, called plod, who arrived quickly to restore order.
It goes to show that the other British local pub tradition, the ongoing, simmering, typically family feud, is alive and well in the new generation of super-​locals.

The Rochester Castle is definitely the old man’s pub of Stoke Newington. Being a Wetherspoons it has a wide range of inexpensive real ales, lagers and food that appeals to this demographic. If this is what you like, then it’s five stars all the way. But I wouldn’t come in here by myself as some of the blokes can be really sleazy. I have no idea how the staff put up with it!
But if you don’t mind a bit of bum groping from some of the sleazier old men, then as others say this is a proper old boozer where you’ll feel at home with your pint and a paper!

My new favourite Weatherspoon. This place is literarly home to a great deal of people in Stoke Newington. It’s got an incredible local feel to it, but without being intimidating or nasty.
What I like most though is the layout of the building. Lot’s of different spaces and a large outdoor area with tree’s and a cat.

Completely brilliant pub in stoke newington, full of local characters such as Stokey De Niro and that The Count. Never any girls in here, just a place for men to drink at incredibly good prices (one pound seventy nine for a pint of great real ale!). The food is obviously terrible micro waved wetherspoons-​tastic, but the beers are great, and the atmosphere is cool. I’ve had lots of great and fun evenings out here, watching the staff battle with the drunks and eating bad curry whils drinking several pints of magic mushroom mild or bonkers conkers. As it’s a real ale pub you can also ask to try out small samples of each ale on offer.
There’s also a beer garden out back AND apparantly the sex pistols played their first ever gig there when it was all different.

Stokie’s very own Weatherspoons pub, this is the place to go if you want a night out on a shoestring. A single and mixer comes in at a mere £1.70, a pint will set you back around £2.00 (depending on your choice, guest ales can be as little as £1.60). You can also get two meals for £6.20 (yep, that’s £3.10 a meal!). Now Master-​chef it isn’t, but when you can be fully fed and watered for well under a tenner, who’s complaining?! There are many themed food promotion nights, Thursdays is ‘Curry Club’ where you can get yourself a curry and a drink for £6 (an impressive variety of curries are available, not just your typical chicken tikka masala, their Goan vegetable is particularly nice), you can also get a burger and beer for £4.99 all day every day, cooked breakfasts come in below the £3 mark and Sunday lunch (including a decent veggie option) are around £4 — all including a drink. Weatherspoons pubs are now a British institution, and the Rochester Castle is keeping that going; always brimming with local characters (who are very friendly, if a little mad) the only let down is that (as with every Weatherspoons) there is no music, although large wide screen TVs cover every wall showing the latest sporting action. Cheap and cheerful, this is the perfect place for budget nights out.

i go there to meet friend who like cheap beer, which is understandable. the one thing i would like to be in the weatherspoons training. would be the words hello.hi. please. thankyou. as you never here it in this pub. and the food needs a lot to be desired.

This is a Wetherspoons pub, so many of you will not even enter the review, let alone the premises. For the rest, this pub has always been a pub, not a cinema or an office, and it’s a very nice pub indeed, with listed plasterwork (naked women and pelicans) a conservatory and a garden for those all important cigarette breaks. Lots of nice artwork about the local area, with the writers and poets who lived round here. The food is very good value, particularly the curry night Indian meals, which are about a fiver including a drink (now including guinness), and the afternoon fish and chips that arrives with bread and tea for £3 10, which is perfect if you’re having a late lunch or an early dinner.
The only thing that may put you off is the huge number of old men who treat it like a social club and give you a chilling glimpse of a possible future that should be avoided at all cost.

This is a pub where the regulars from the neighborhood come, those who don’t live far.
That’s why there are always people but the place is big and it is never full.
On the week end, the clientele change a bit because it is open later than the others pub in the area.
If you are lucky, you could finish your night having fun thanks to their Karaōke nights.
Classics are mixed with the last hits so don’t be surprised to see a grand-​father and then a student. Drinks are on a regular basis and the staff is welcoming.
That kind of place is perfect for the end of a night outside with some friends happy.