Pros:
Location
Ground Floor Pub
Rooms
Friendly staff
Base price
WiFi
Cons:
Bathrooms/Showers
Tiny personal lockers, Luggage room
Extra item costs
Inconsiderate guests
Lack of consequences for breaking rules
First it should be noted, while I am a budget conscious traveler, I am not and have never been a backpacker. Mid-thirties and mid-career, I'm also not a gap yearer or university student on break. I chose Publove @ The Crown because it seemed like the best compromise between cost, comfort, and cleanliness. I don't mind shared rooms, but I expect other areas of comfort and privacy, especially for showering and changing.
Pros:
Location - Lavendar Hill is a great location, a nice neighborhood in and of itself. Far enough from central London to cater to an older and less frantic crowd but close enough to make taking the bus or train very easy.
Ground Floor Pub - half pub, half common room, good food, reasonable prices. Mildly annoyed that with such great rums none of the staff could make a tiki drink. You have Kraken but can't make a tiki drink? Minor quibble and mostly tongue in cheek.
Rooms - furniture style and brickwork is very nice. Liked the little fireplaces. Too bad they don't work!
Friendly staff - Each staff member I spoke to was relatively sympathetic and willing to help in any way they thought they could. However, they couldn't always help. More about this in Cons.
Base price - obviously an extremely good price. However, I would have paid more if some of my Cons had been adequately addressed.
WiFi - it worked and was fast.
Cons:
Bathrooms/Showers - absolutely inadequate for so many reasons. I felt very uncomfortable in the gender combined toilet/shower stall situation. Didn't mind if the stalls were bathrooms but showers and bathrooms? Didn't work and I was constantly worried about being seen. There are two individual bathroom/shower rooms but they suffer from being wet baths which means you WILL get all your clothing wet. Also didn't want to change in mixed dorms. At LEAST have an all female dorm, but for more privacy minded male guests, too, maybe a single changing room? Please?! This was a ton of stress I didn't need and in talking to other women, I was not alone. More about this in Inconsiderate Guests, but the bathrooms and showers were also often a total mess.
Tiny personal lockers/luggage room - second worst aspect of my experience. I worked very hard to put everything I brought with me in one carry on and one small backpack, and I expected (even from the pictures) to be able to fit these into my locker. Instead I find that the actual size of this locker is a lockbox. A cubby. And every morning I have to tramp downstairs and get someone to unlock the luggage room so I can get my clothes and other items for the day and drop stuff off at night. In some cases I'm going in and out of the luggage room three or four times a day. Unacceptable.
Extra item costs - the lock and the towel etc? Just please add that to the price per night! Don't nickel and dime me. I'd rather have paid for it up front. I'm more offended at it being extra than the cost itself.
Inconsiderate Guests and lack of consequences for breaking rules - as annoyed as I was by the bathroom/showers and the luggage situation, by far the worst part of staying at The Crown was guests who were inconsiderate. Almost from the get go, I showed up to people who didn't clean up after themselves in the room, two guys who argued loudly after quiet time one of which threatened to get naked in front of me if I didn't go away (staff moved me to another room), to people drinking in the room and leaving bottles all over (which I cleaned up!), to people spreading their items all over the room, and finally nearly every day walking into a bathroom or shower in a state not for use. If time, I'd wait for the staff to clean. If in a hurry or at an odd time, I would clean the bathroom or shower MYSELF. It didn't seem fair to bother the staff constantly and it would have taken more time. Even when I complained to the staff about these issues, there never seemed to be consequences directed at other guests. A few accomodations were made for me, which I appreciate, but the inconsiderate guests simply got away with it.
Would I stay here again? No. Not unless serious changes were made to the bathroom/shower situation, a more convenient luggage situation was implemented, and disruptive guests were shown the door. Closer quarters means higher standards, not lower expectations. You have to be more considerate of your fellow travelers when room is at a premium. If some guests can't understand that, they need to find some place else to go.
That said, there is a lot to like about The Crown and I feel these issues can be addressed rather easily and rather inexpensively. If solved, I would consider staying again.