Category: pubs

pubs

All the pubs we didn’t go to

Post author By Ray
Post date 8th December 2024
5 Comments on All the pubs we didn’t go to

I’ll always think of 2024 as the year Dad died. Four months on, it hurts less – but it’s often in the pub I find myself dwelling on the loss.

In the immediate, horrible aftermath of Dad’s death, I wrote something like a formal obituary. Then, a little later, I wrote about how we bonded over pubs and beer.

But of course I’m never going to stop thinking about Dad, or run out of things to say about him.

Last month, the day after what would have been his 76th birthday, what remains of the family gathered in Bristol for lunch. Afterwards, we drifted to The Strawberry Thief, a Belgian-style cafe-bar.

It felt like the right place to go for a couple of reasons.

First, they served Brugse Zot – a fairly unremarkable Belgian blonde beer that was Dad’s favourite. He discovered it on a trip to Bruges more than a decade ago and got a case from my brother for Christmas every year since.

Mum and I toasted him, raised our glasses, and enjoyed every drop of what Dad always called ‘That Zot’.

Secondly, The Strawberry Thief is a reminder that you can’t make assumptions about what people will or won’t like based on their social class. Dad was working class and never became, or aspired to be, anything else. That didn’t stop him deciding he liked citrusy, piney craft beers, or taprooms, or vaguely pretentious bars like The Strawberry Thief.

Equally, he might decide he hated them. That was half the fun of a session with Dad.

This weekend, I braved Storm Darragh to visit Mum in Somerset. “Maybe we can pop round to the pub?” I said and, somewhat to my surprise, she said yes. I was even more surprised when she ordered a pint of Bath Ales (St Austell) Gem, having not seen her drink a pint in years.

The village isn’t cute – it’s one of those collections of former council houses, farm buildings and industrial units along a main road. The pub isn’t cute either, with a public bar dominated by working men in hi-viz jackets and muddy boots who spend most of their time smoking outside the front door.

I’d always got the impression Dad didn’t like the pub much but Mum told me that wasn’t the case at all. In fact, after their first visit, he said he was worried that, in retirement, it might be a bit too easy to end up there every lunchtime spending money they didn’t have on booze that wouldn’t do them any good. So he avoided it altogether.

Mum and I had been there a while, one round in, before we noticed that both of us were bopping along to the jukebox. It was non-stop blues music – not exactly the kind of songs Dad would have chosen himself, but not far off. We shivered. It felt spooky.

The landlord popped in to ask Mum how she was, glancing around to look for Dad. He obviously hadn’t heard the news. Mum told him and, in his gruff, unpretentious way, he expressed his sympathy. He seemed quite moved.

After a couple of pints, Mum began to reminisce about the drinking she and Dad did in their twenties, crawling through Bridgwater, playing euchre in The Cobblestones, Dad being presented with his own glass by the landlord and landlady…

The booze eventually made us maudlin, especially when we returned to a house where Dad wasn’t, but where his bass guitar still leans against the wall.

Another small problem is that every pub I go to in Bristol has either some memory of Dad, or is somewhere we hoped to take him “when he gets a bit better”.

For the past couple of years we’d talked about a taproom tour, even if we had to get cabs between them.

That now puts me in the ridiculous position of feeling faintly melancholy every time I go to Lost & Grounded, surrounded by plastic tubing, stainless steel, and people with beanie hats very high on their heads.

We never took him to The Star in Fishponds, which I’m sure he’d have loved, or to the Board Mill Social Club, with which he was fascinated.

My brother has spoken about feeling ambushed by things that make him think about Dad.

Personally, I’m constantly being emotionally tripwired by posters advertising upcoming gigs by pub blues bands: “Ooh, blues night at The Stillage, I really must tell Dad about tha– oh, fuck.”

Christmas is going to be weird because there won’t be a Christmas Day pint with Dad. There hasn’t been the past few years, to be honest, because he wasn’t well enough to make the short walk.

There was always the promise of it happening, though, even if we ended up drinking bottled beer on the sofa.

Maybe I’ll take Mum to the pub instead, while my brother cooks. Or perhaps I won’t. It might just be another way of pricking my heart and I don’t know if that’s helpful.

The slow death of a Bristol estate pub

Post author By Boak & Bailey
Post date 14th November 2024
1 Comment on The slow death of a Bristol estate pub

We never knew, or never noticed, The Mayors Arms, one of Bristol’s few surviving post war buildings. And now it’s set for demolition.

Actually, we did notice it – just not before 2009 when it was converted into a restaurant.

In its most recent guise as Sousta, a “Mediterranean restaurant and bar”, it intrigued us because it never seemed to have any customers. Ever.

Its location, at the bottom end of a large council estate, on the river embankment, offers little passing trade. There are no other shops or hospitality outlets nearby.

In fact, the only business that could really work here is a neighbourhood pub in a working class area where people drink plenty of beer.

And that’s what Redcliffe was in February 1964 when this version of the pub opened. Here’s how it was described in a report in the Evening Post:

A three-storey building of striking appearance, this modern Bass-Worthington house has a spacious lounge and bar and an off-sales shop on the ground floor. In the summer a paved terrace off the forecourt will assume a Continental atmosphere with flowers and shrubs, and tables fitted with sun umbrellas… The Avon Lounge, following the trend of modern public-house design, is an attractive room, tastefully decorated, luxuriously carpeted and discreetly lit. The main part of the room has concealed trough lighting at ceiling level. In addition, spotlights pick out the bar counter and service area, opposite which is a 32 foot long photo-mural showing something of the activity at Bristol docks. The Redcliffe Bar is also decorated and furnished in modern style and affords a high standard of appearance and comfort. Concealed lighting, similar to that installed in the lounge, adds much to the general atmosphere.

This new building replaced an older pub of the same name on the same site which was demolished in 1963 as part of the post-war redevelopment of the entire area.

If you happen to be interested in that, Ray wrote about it in more detail for the zine Brutal Bristol edited by Tom Benjamin. We’ve also put that article up on Patreon for subscribers to read.

In short, though, this was a flagship development for Bristol Council after World War II as they sought to (a) rebuild a badly blitzed city and (b) move the population from crumbling Victorian terraces into modern homes and tower blocks.

SOURCE: The Simonds Family website.

The old Mayors Arms did, it has to be said, look rather more appealing than the new one. If it had survived the post-war reconstruction phase it would no doubt be sitting there now looking quaint and rather appealing.

There’s a nice human story attached to the 1963 demolition, however.

When regulars at the old pub heard the news they immediately raised a petition to have the brewery put the publicans, Mr and Mrs Jones, in charge of the new one.

But, as the Evening Post reported, “Bass, however, had already decided Mr and Mrs Jones were the right people for the job.”

Checking in 1975, thanks to Fred Pearce’s Bristol pub guide, we get a little more detail:

Two long modern bars with spacious lounges set out dining room fashion. Piano and darts but neither are used much. Takes coach parties and locals from the nearby flats. Coffee is served in the morning. Full range of food at lunchtime. Full Bass beer range (no real beer though), a bit expensive. ‘Music while you work’ muzak horribly obtrusive.

The story of this particular estate pub isn’t much different to that of many others.

The newspaper archives have “under new management” announcements and proud talk of refurbishment.

They also have this story from the Bristol Evening Post in July 1986:

A man needed hospital treatment for cuts and a back injury after being attacked by a group of ten to 15 youths at the Mayor’s Arms, in Redcliffe, Bristol. One of the ringleaders was described as being white, in his middle twenties, slim, wearing a white T-shirt with the motif “I’m an alcoholic.”

Because it wasn’t especially remarkable, just another unfashionable estate pub, the trail runs cold until this entry at Pubs Galore from 2009:

Closed, emptied of fixtures & fittings and the builders are in knocking down walls etc. A roughly drawn notice outside says it’s to become an Indian Restaurant.

Now, it’s set to become “student cluster flats”, and that’s that.

When you see an estate pub, do take a second to have a look, and maybe take a photograph, because the chances are it’ll be gone before the decade is out.

Tags estate pubs

pubs

We’re very much here for Hereford

Post author By Boak & Bailey
Post date 12th November 2024
2 Comments on We’re very much here for Hereford

One of the great things about The Drapers Arms is that we made friends there – the type who say: “Do you want to do a daytrip to Hereford?”

Jess had been to Hereford as a small child on a family holiday. She remembers the Mappa Mundi in the cathedral and that’s about it.

Ray had never been and his only point of reference was Robert De Niro yelling at Sean Bean in Ronin: “What’s the colour of the boathouse at Hearford!?”

It’s an interesting place – an historic cathedral city on the river Wye, with a few cute little streets and a general sense of being in the borderlands. Are you in the Midlands, the West Country, or Wales? We heard accents from all three while we were there and it’s also reflected in its drinking culture.

Our friends had drawn up an itinerary and we were pleased to see that the two pubs we’d identified as must-visits were also top of the organiser’s agenda.

(How had we identified them? By reviewing Retired Martin’s blog, obviously.)

The Barrels, Hereford.

The Barrels sent out all the right vibes immediately: wonky building, carpet in the bar, dartboard, red upholstered benches, and so on. The bar staff were passionate about, and proud of, their full range of Wye Valley beer. “Start at this end and work your way along, would be my advice,” said one regular. “Though you might need an ambulance to get home.”

We frequently see Butty Bach and HPA in Bristol but there were some beers here we hadn’t encountered ever, or for years. Bitter and Wholesome Stout grabbed our attention in particular. The former was nutty and almost like a light mild, the latter a delightful swirl of coffee and cream. It felt quite decadent at only 4.6%.

The prices were a pleasant change from Bristol too: £5.85 got us a pint and half of beer in excellent condition. And the seasonal special was being advertised at £3.90 a pint.

We were there just after opening time and there were already a few people getting settled. Most of them were drinking bitter as far as we could tell. We could have happily settled in for the afternoon but there were other places we needed to be.

Perfect Bass at The Lichfield Vaults.

We stopped for lunch at The Lichfield Vaults which also had a tempting old skool beer range, including Bass and Timothy Taylor Landlord. We had one of each. The Landlord was very good and the Bass was damn near perfect: cool, lively, intriguingly funky.

The Orange Tree is a Black Country Ales pub and perhaps has a wider role as embassy for the Black Country. The people behind the bar and half the customers had strong Midlands accents. There were Black Country Ales on the pumps and Kath’s homemade cobs in the chiller. (£3 and, as one of our companions kept saying, “bigger than my head”.)

We enjoyed Pig on the Wall, the Black Country Ales mild, as well as a great pint of Hopback Summer Lightning.

After that, we needed to sober up, and so went sightseeing while our party broke up to (a) go to a football match or (b) drink wine. We nosed around the cathedral, looked at a statue of Edward Elgar, regarded an old barn, climbed into the roof of a church to look at an obscene carving, and then pottered along the river.

As they day grew dimpsy we rendezvoused at Beer in Hand near the football ground. (Pictured at the top of this post.)

It looks and feels like a micropub, except it’s massive, and has a bunch of bottles, cans and keg beer. It’s another of those hybrids we identified here, we suppose.

We didn’t fancy the two cask ales, one of which was from Bristol, of course, and the keg beers seemed to mostly be hazy pales – which, again, we get plenty of at home.

So, we went for Helles Lager by Burnt Mill. We enjoyed it as an example of an English craft lager rather than a particularly authentic example of the style.

We should perhaps also point out that Herefordshire is also cider country. Most pubs had interesting cider available, often quite a range, and the town even has its own cider museum. But we’ll save that for another trip.

Tags bass, Hereford

london pubs

Four new-to-us classic London pubs

Post author By Boak & Bailey
Post date 9th October 2024
3 Comments on Four new-to-us classic London pubs

We were in London for a short visit this weekend and, between us, went to a few notable pubs that we never visited while living there.

The Boleyn Tavern was infamous for being the West Ham pub because it was close to the former Upton Park stadium.

Regularly boarded up or closed ahead of particularly tasty fixtures, it wasn’t the sort of place we ever felt the need to go.

However, Jess happened to read about it in the latest London Drinker and as she had a few hours to kill before meeting a friend out east decided to wander up that way.

It’s a stunning sight from outside. It’s enormous for a start, dominating the corner of a busy junction – a classic gin palace from the dying days of that trend.

The beautiful interior of The Boleyn.

The interior is no less remarkable. There are many, many separate drinking areas, which works just as well today as it did in the 19th century.

The public bar contained West Ham fans getting a couple of beers in before the game. (It was a home game, but the ground is now miles from the pub.) Meanwhile the areas towards the back were full of families having lunch.

Although it is a gin palace in style, the layout reminded Jess of the floor plans of improved pubs she studied while researching 20th Century Pub.

It had one central multi-faceted bar; a canteen at the back; and different compartments for groupings like ‘third class women’.

However, it’s far too ornate to be considered an improved pub, with gorgeous etched windows and stained glass ceilings. There is something to look at in every direction.

It also just feels good to sit in. It’s a classic example of the kind of place where you might be on your own, in your own corner, but still be aware of the hubbub going on around you.

Oh, and the beer was pretty good too – halves of wonderful Five Points Best were served in nice stem glasses with a more generous head than is usual in London.

The Rosemary Branch.

Walking with friends along the Regent’s Canal from the Limehouse Basin to King’s Cross, Ray revisited a couple of old favourites (The Dove, The Wenlock). But he was also introduced to The Rosemary Branch in Islington.

It’s an impressive sight above the canal – a big chunk of Victoriana with its name carved in italic sans-serif capitals on the frieze.

There’s been some sort of pub here for at least a couple of centuries but the present building is from the late 19th century. At various times it had pleasure gardens, a dance hall, and a music hall. Even now it houses a small theatre.

The beer was nothing special, just Shepherd Neame ale in the condition you generally expect in London.

But the atmosphere of the bar was magical, especially with the sun blasting through the windows, deepening the shadows and shining off the dark, polished wood.

Dangling from the ceiling are two very large scale model planes, a Spitfire pursuing a Junkers 88, which tickles another layer of collective memory.

The Anchor & Hope.

The Anchor & Hope in Clapton has tempted us from afar but we never made it in when we lived in nearby Walthamstow.

We used to see it on the other side of the river Lea when we went for walks and just never made it across. For one thing, there was only a broken footpath on that side and few places to cross.

And, secondly, it had a mixed reputation locally, and presented a rather unfriendly face to the world with forbidding signs in the door panes.

Architecturally, it’s an unusual historical anomaly – a surviving example of a simple beer house with one tiny room. Most of the seating is outside at the water’s edge.

There’s no food beyond crunchy things in packets but the beer is just superb. Both Fuller’s London Pride and ESB were in perhaps the best condition we’ve encountered this year.

While we drank, what we took to be a regular volunteered to light the open fire. After much effort, he got it blazing.

Even though it wasn’t that cold outside, the smell, sound and feel of burning logs made it very hard to leave.

The Somers Town Coffee House in 2017. SOURCE: Reading Tom on Flickr, under a Creative Commons Licence.

Finally, we both visited The Somers Town Coffee House near Euston. Now, this really is an improved pub, built in the 1920s on the site of a much older establishment.

The London County Council (LCC) were reluctant to allow pubs to be built on their new estates but allowed this one on the Ossulston Street Estate as long as it had a “refreshment room”.

We enjoyed its austere, angular, interwar exterior, which harmonises perfectly with the blocks of flats that surround it.

They feel as if they’ve been transplanted from the Netherlands or Germany and the pub itself has perhaps a hint of a Scandinavian accent.

The interior is less exciting having been remodelled many times by the look of it. At least it’s not grey, though.

We enjoyed excellent pints of Timothy Taylor Landlord and marvelled at the somewhat village-like atmosphere five minutes walk from the Euston Road.

Tags 20th Century Pub, improved pubs

pubs

You can’t go wrong with old records in a pub

Post author By Boak & Bailey
Post date 25th September 2024
4 Comments on You can’t go wrong with old records in a pub

Every Sunday afternoon people arrive at The Swan With Two Necks, Bristol, with little boxes of 7 inch records which they play to each other.

On a recent rainy Sunday we sat in the glow of a couple of beers and listened to the warm crackle of vinyl on a turntable.

Motown. The Small Faces. Some psychedelic obscurity with a sitar weaving through it. A John Leyton single sloshing around in Joe Meek toilet reverb. And then lots of reggae heavy on the bass, like a lullaby.

Not one record was younger than us.

“You can’t go wrong with old records in a pub,” said Jess after a while. “They just seem to fit.”

Earlier that same day, at The Hare on the Hill, we’d watched the landlord track back and forth to select albums from the stack on and around the piano.

We were there long enough to hear the tail end of a jazz album, all of Crosby, Stills & Nash, and the first side of Forever Changes by Love.

We talked about Love – about Arthur Lee’s unusual voice, the way his vocals don’t quite land where you expect them to, and our shared sense that we ought to like the music more than we do.

We marvelled at the blend of the voices in CSN and, subconsciously, at the way they blended into the densely decorated walls and hidden corners of the pub.

The music filled gaps in the space and in our conversation.

Perhaps it’s that pubs are essentially analogue – especially those that serve cask ale. Beers from the wood, wooden fixtures, a whiff of arts and crafts about the bits of brass and cast iron table-bases.

The magic that people perceive in cask ale is similar to the magic they perceive in pub buildings which is similar to the magic they perceive in the sound of vinyl. A sense of connecting with something authentic.

They’re also essentially nostalgic. Most pubs are embassies of the past. Victorian buildings with plastic Watneys clocks, Bass on the bar, and packets of pork scratchings whose packets haven’t been redesigned since 1981.

It’s not unusual to find a pub with a stack of records in the corner or behind the bar. Albums that, if they were sold on Discogs, would not warrant a ‘Mint’ or ‘VG+’ rating.

Split sleeves, yellowing inner sleeves, with a whiff of stale beer and cigarette smoke about them.

They’re part of the décor – a physical evocation of the past – as much as they’re practical.

This resistance to modernity might be why video games in pubs didn’t take, or why a certain type of pub goer winces at the sight and sound of electronic gambling machines, touchscreen jukeboxes or, in CAMRA speak, “piped music”.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the resurgence of hard copy media, in reaction against a decade dominated by streaming services.

And there is something about the physicality of a disc – a suggestion of ceremony.

The DJs at The Swan With Two Necks certainly seem like a priestly class, performing the old rituals, exhibiting holy relics of the 20th century as, all around, the 21st century begins to tower over the little old pub on the back street.

Tags music