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Great Pubs

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You must have known at least one. I mean almost mythically great with something extraordinary about it, not just an acceptable local boozer.

Many years ago (*harp glissando*) I used to frequent the Miners’ Arms at Greenhow, near Pately Bridge. This was great for the following bullet-proof reasons:

1 Free house. As I haven’t lived in the UK for a long time, I have no idea if they still exists. It meant not being owned by a brewery, and able to sell what the hell the landlord wanted to sell. This resulted in 16 taps along a fairly short bar, because he wanted to sell a lot.

2 One room. None of this fancy partitioning or different levels or what-have-you. It was basically the front room of a house, with bench seats around two sides.

3 Darts. None of that southern nonsense, either – no trebles. One of the locals, humourously nicknamed Butch, threw from the hip – never seen that anywhere else. He also wore a stetson. All the time.

4 House mild, correctly mixed by John the landlord from the slops and allowed to ferment a little. Jesus fucking christ.

5 Lock-ins. Regular, whenever there was a demand, which was most nights. A frequent after-hours doorknocker was the local policeman, who hung his hat on the back of the door and settled down for a few hands of brag. Butch once stole his police car to go drinking in Pately for a change.

6 Crazes/crazies. Raw egg eating competiton, watergun fights (including vaulting comboy-style over the bar), and the perennial favourite of Doing The Taps – a pint from each, working along the bar. The killers that sorted the men from the boys were the last two – Coke and lemonade.

7 Overnight accommodation. Too pissed and/or tired to go home? Sleep on the bench seats.

8 Mushy peas. The real deal.

7

Comments

  1. Exist, not exists. Can’t be arsed to go through the hoops to correct it. And something about Butch stealing the cop car I forgot – he did it while the copper was inside, playing brag and drinking after hours. We could hear the sirens and see the lights flash. “Someone’s nicked you car.” Policeman rolls his eyes, plays his turn.

    Oh yeah – if we’ve done this before (someone is bound to let me know); a) I don’t care, and 2) let’s do it again.

  2. The Royal George, in either Royal Street or George Street, I forget, in Lambeth. Demolished many years ago. Not great for any reasons like the above: the landlord (Eric) was a stickler for rules, closed on time and barred overtly bad behaviour by regularly barring regulars. Ok, a contrite face, an apology and buying him a drink usually got you back in a week later. For the best part of 5 years I was there at least part of every Saturday night, as were any of the student body with a thirst. A good jukebox, Ruddles County and an education as least as good as at the hospital at the end of the road. I think about it a lot, and about Eric and his wife, surrogate parents to any of us needing that comfort. Eric, poor bugger, ended up an inpatient on the psych ward, having plunged into a deep depression that had him try to take his life.

  3. Let me tell you a story. 1985. I was eighteen working overnight in a bakery/ butchers. Christmas time the head baker said after a shift come with me. Duly we followed him to a darkened alley. Couple of knocks and a whole other world appeared. Barmaids and everything. One bloke had an alarm clock on his table where he was resting his head. True story.

    • I went a few times to a fondue restaurant in Dublin that was a bit like that, run by a relative of the lighting engineer. It looked like a house and when when you knocked, the door opened a crack until you gave your name then you were welcomed in. Great food and a good wine list but any beer, including Guinness, was in cans. Years later, I showed the business card to a girlfriend who was from Dublin and she told me the area was extremely dodgy so I can only assume that it was an illegal operation.

  4. At the age of 17 I was in in Stockwell’s in Mansfield* in 1991 when a proper wild-west fight broke out. Everything seemed ordinarily lively until I happened to see a bar stool flying horizontally through the air, smashing a huge mirror. Mayhem ensued, possibly accompanied by banjo music, and me and my two similarly apple-cheeked pals legged it, getting several dozen yards before we realised we were still holding our half-drunk pints.

    I assumed this was completely normal.

    *A pub next to an extremely horrible bus station, which is always a sign of quality. See also: meat raffles.

  5. Great OP, H.

    I think pubs like this will still exist, but the message is clear – there were rules, but they were the pub’s own rules. Nowadays, the likelihood is that regulation / normalisation is eroding the number of pubs who can set their own ‘standards’.

    My bezzie mate is from Leek and I remember visiting a (now closed) pub in the Staffs Moorlands where some players were able to clench the dart in a fist, appear to throw it sideways, yet achieve remarkable accuracy.

    For me, there is one more thing needed for your Great Pub in Greenhow – live informal music. Truly one of the most life affirming occasions for me is a pub music session – ordinary people having the bottle to get up and do a turn, often with remarkable gift. For one week per year, there is a pub away from the seafront in Sidmouth which achieves this great mixture of common wit, mannered individual performance and – this is the right word – merry music. Honestly, if you could bottle the atmosphere in that pub, you could make a million.

    • Our coach pulled into Leek for a couple of hours on our way to Port Vale. Me and my mate went to this great little pub that was apparently haunted, but what made it memorable for me was that it’s the only time I’ve ever come across a pub that put cushions on the wall, above the urinal, for the weary gentleman drinker to rest his head whilst emptying his bladder. Yes, it will be full of all kinds of germs, but what a thoughtful idea.

      Maybe next they could think of putting some on the floor just past the step that I didn’t see was there.

  6. The Duck in the Pond at Harrow Weald/Belmont (@Slug may know it) was my local for a couple of years and some of the locals were part of the neighbourhood crime family, who tolerated us four harmless geek housemates and even nodded to us occasionally. There was a distinct atmosphere in the place which was kept in check by the landlord and it had the world’s worst jukebox, usually dominated by one of the family who had a fondness for The Crystal Chandelier by Charlie Pride as well as other even less popular stuff. Everyone knew not to talk to the girls that hung around the villains too. The place declined further when the genial but strict landlord left and his replacement wasn’t made of the same stuff.

    Also, The Headstone opposite North Harrow tube station. A bikers pub where the skinheads and bikers co existed amiably and the only trouble was caused by the pissed up “straights”. Neal Kaye’s Soundhouse was in the function hall every Sunday having been moved on from The Bandwagon at Kingsbury. Some very good nights there. Literally no locals objected when it was knocked down a few years later.

    • I do indeed know the Duck In The Pond, @davebigpicture, although I only ever used it on the odd occasion. Didn’t realise it was such a den of iniquity, it looked quite pleasant from outside. There was a pretty decent pub near to it on Kenton Lane called the Seven Balls (referred to locally as the ‘three and a half men’) where the garden at the back was often a strange mixture of little kiddies having fun while the suburban drug dealers quietly argued about the best ingredients to cut coke with.

      There was brilliantly sleazy Irish pub at Belmont Circle called The Spanish Arch, popular with the local Mayo Irish community, which eventually lost its alcohol license when the police insisted that renewing it would severely undermine crime prevention locally. At one point it rivalled the notorious Dicey Riley’s in Neasden for regular riotous assemblies.

  7. For sheer character and atmosphere, the Coach and Horses in Soho was always a good fun pub to idle away a few hours in which I used to do whenever I was down in London.

    While they weren’t always draped over the bar, you could very often catch sight of the likes of John Hurt and Jeffrey Barnard getting plastered and causing all sorts of bother. The latter once memorably roundly (and unfairly) abused me for getting served ahead of him. A mainstay of Private Eye and allegedly the UK’s rudest Coach landlord, Norman Balon was another real character. Sadly, after Norman’s retirement about 15 years back, the pub is hardly worth going into nowadays.

    Some great anecdotes about the Coach and other Soho drinking dens (the Colony Room) in Christopher Howse’s Soho in the 80s for anyone with a sufficiently strong liver

  8. My favourite now is The Pineapple in Kentish Town, thankfully rescued a good few years back. It hasn’t been tarted up too much, it does what a pub should do – serve good beers and ever changing without resorting to being a place for real ale bores. They serve good Thai food, they have locals sitting up by the bar and there is a pub cat usually fast asleep by the hand pumps.

    I grew up in Hampstead, and there used to be a load of great pubs there (now estate agents and coffee shops). The Coach and Horses used to be our refuge whilst at school, it was no larger than a front room, served only a limited selection of beers, food was crusty ham rolls but there was a dartboard and the landlord couldn’t give a stuff we were schoolboys.

    • What years did you frequent the Coach and Horses? That was one of my favourite pubs when I lived in Hampstead (95-97). The Sunday night lock-ins were legendary. There were usually about a dozen of us (including Dave Bedford, the runner, occasionally) and we’d all be in the back room playing pool. Gerry, the landlord would keep the beer flowing till he could see we were all legless. Then he’d come and suggest a game of killer, £1 per man. He’d win. He’d then say he really shouldn’t let us have another drink, before announcing okay, one more. Whilst we were all in high spirits at being able to buy one last pint, at something like 2 or 3 in the morning, Gerry would suggest another game of killer, at £5 per man. Wiley old bloke, Gerry!

  10. The Shakespeare, Totterdown, Bristol, late 70s and afterwards.
    Landlord Ernie (“Mad Ern”) had two decks set up in the bar. The walls were covered top to bottom with 7inch vinyl in placcy sleeves just like in your fave record shop – northern soul, psych, poptastic nonsense, anything and everything. When Ern got bored with serving, he’d fire up the decks, kill the juke box and treat us all to a selection of his singles collection. Wife and daughter behind the bar too; massively popular family pub with atmos you could bottle and sell.
    The Star And Garter, St. Pauls, Bristol, late 70s and afterwards.
    SMACK “Bloodclaaat!” SMACK “Yah cheatin’ man!” Dominoes in the front bar, tables and tables. Smokes and folks in the back bar. Derek on the decks playing his reggae collection. Dubplates straight from Kingston, rare lovers rock and plenty roots. Closing time? Ya haveta be jokin’ mon! Deep in the heart of Jamaican Bristol, and only two minutes down the road from my gaff. Never been bettered.

    • That reminds me, The Royal Charter in Kingston On Thames. A strange place where they had a resident DJ who had his records in permanent cupboards behind him. He had a sign that said “sorry, no requests” with the sorry crossed out, before it would have been considered funny and just played whatever he liked on Sunday lunchtimes and I think Saturday nights, always finishing with Groovin’ by The Young Rascals. When it closed around ‘85 people came from far and wide for the last night, some from New Zealand IIRC., the crowds spilling onto the street.

      • I used to go there Sunday nights around 79-82. We always referred to it as the Fishes, from its previous name The Three Fishes. The music was so loud you couldn’t hear what anyone was saying and sign language was used for getting a round in.

        I went looking for it about 20 years ago when I worked in Kingston. “Don’t look for it, it’s not there anymore” and there’s an underpass where it used to be.

        Sunday night DJ was a big man, always played Loretta by the Nervous Eaters and a bootleg of The Joker, which I have just managed to track down 40 years on. The evening would finish with ringing ears and Dory Previn’s Going Home.

        We’d go home on our bikes, stopping for spring rolls near that stripper pub on the way to New Malden.

  11. Prince of Wales, Aberdeen. Down the stairs from Union Street into the murky, dangerous depths of The Back Wynd. Ignore the raddled charms of the lady-of-the-night and push open the door.
    Wade through the smoke being very, very careful not to bump into any of the thugs standing there. If perchance you do, respond immediately. “Sorry about that. I see I spilt an infinitely small portion of your glass, let me get you another pint. Shall I also buy your five friends one as well?” Finally reach the bar. Hold your ten bob note up and wait fifteen minutes before Archie is ready to serve you. “Two pints o’ heavy and a bag o’ yer famously stale Smith’s Crisps.” If it’s a good night Archie serves your order within another fifteen minutes. Use the time available to surreptitiously cast your eye around the clientele hoping beyond hope to espy Carole Cruikshank. And there she is. And, yes oh yes, that’s a smile. Check for the hundredth time – is Mad Bad Tommy White here? No sign, he’s most probably beating the shit out of some hapless OAP or tossing one of his rivals into the harbour. Walk casually over to Carole. “Hi there, how’s it going?” (I have a way with words). Carole smiles again and suggests we go outside for a “wee breath of air”. Out here there’s a wind straight from Siberia but I’m on fire. We kiss. I don’t hear Mad Bad Tommy White clattering down the granite stairs. Next thing I know an ambulance man is asking “How many fingers?”
    Forty years later – The Prince of Wales has three separate dining areas serving “the finest of locally sourced produce”. I order an Arbroath Smokie and a large glass of Chilean Sauvignon Blanc.

  12. The Flower Pot, Sunbury on Thames, 1983-87. Dark, smoke-filled and not an especially great pub in hindsight but the scene of my and many mates introduction to underage drinking and how to behave in pubs. The Landlord was Bill, aided and abetted by Marianne, his lovely daughter, who usually tolerated our youthful stupidity with a patient and friendly demeanour I’ve never seen anywhere else. Great jukebox too…post punk, 60’s classics and cool eighties tunes in abundance.
    No particular food to speak of, not that we would have ordered any, but it’s surely people that make pubs. This was the scene of many a happy and fun night, often before a teenage house party or a trip up to town clubbing. I had a blast in there and no pub has lived up to the atmosphere since.

    • Sadly The Flowerpot is now merely a perfectly decent pub where I occasionally take my mum for lunch if I’m visiting. But no jukebox, and not much in the way of vibes. I tended to head to the Three Fishes or Admiral Hawke in early 80s – a v slightly shorter walk – but the Flowerpot was indeed a great pub. In Brighton now, where we’re spoiled for choice for good boozers, but if you’re after somewhere that still has a juke box The Heart and Hand is a cracking pub ( in a rather lovely, lived -in way).

  14. The Portcullis in Clifton Village, Bristol. Tiny pub, main part about the size of a medium living room. Good beer on tap, loads of regulars and a roaring fire when appropriate. Was unbelievably smoky before the ban though, not sure how I put up with it. Biggest advantage is that it was 50 yards from my home and I could walk to and from there without crossing any streets.

  15. 1. The Magdala Tavern, South End Green, Hampstead. The pub where Ruth Ellis shot her lover in 1955. A handy little folk industry has grown up around that: you could still see what were allegedly the bullet holes, tghough it looked more like someone had taken a cold chisel to the wall; in the saloon bar could be found a couple of old geezers who would tell you the whole story for the price of a pint, even though neither had been anywhere near the place that night. I did a stretch there behind the bar in the 70s. In the saloon bar were the aforementioned old geezers plus low-level Hampstead literary types who would often turn to fisticuffs when they got drunk and have to be ushered out. In the middle offie bar Kim Philby’s son would hold court. The public would be full of low-level villains who were in league with the sensationally corrupt landlord who in turn was in league with the draymen. I would often lose my wages playing spoof with the landlord and his cronies after hours. One night a regular’s huge dog (great dane?) jumped right over the bar and killed the landlord’s little pooch. Great days…it’s a fancy-schmancy Hampstead gastropub now.

    2. Blisland Inn, somewhere in the middle of Bodmin Moor. One of those pubs you can never find even though you’ve been plenty of times before. You feel like you’re in for an American Werewolf experience when you first arrive, but inside it’s warm and welcoming, with pretty decent food and more beers than you could shake a willy after. Plus an iguana.

    3. New Inn, Tywardreath, Cornwall. This has probably changed now, but when I lived down the street about 15 years ago it was that rarity, a pub with no food. “Food? Sorry, this is a pub. Could do you a picked egg if you like. Pint of Bass?” Even though I was a toff from the Smoke they took me in and made me feel I’d finally found the place where everybody knows your name. Sadly, all the regulars who gave the place its atmosphere were smokers, and the heart went out of the place when they were banished to the garden.

    Honourable mention: the Lamb, Lambs Conduit St. Love to call in there if I’m bookshopping round Bloomsbury. Hope it hasn’t been messed up.

    • I circumnavigated Bodmin Moor on my bike a couple of years back and wound up at The Blisland Inn for my lunch and can attest to its quality.

      As for Tywardreath, I’ve just booked an airbnb there for our last night on the South West Coast Path in June. I shall report back!

    • A little known fact, the “Yorkshire moors” sequences were actually filmed in the Black Mountains in South Wales, not sure where the pub was though.

            • When I was about 15 I was one of a select group who were asked to gather in the school library, as a friend of my German teacher was coming in to meet us and interview us for the Yorkshire Post. The teacher went to the school we were at himself, it being Barnsley Grammar School, and we knew that he was in the same year as, and remained close friends with Parky and Brian Glover. I must admit, we expected it to be Parky, what with him having started his career as a journalist at the Barnsley Chronicle, but it was Mr Glover who turned up.

              He was doing a piece on violence on TV and wanted to get our view on it. He said he was vehemently against it and gave an impassioned speech about its effect on youthful minds (he was a former teacher himself). At the time I was watching every horror film they had at the video shop, the gorier the better (oh for the days when a 12 year old could turn up with 50p and leave the shop with Dawn of the Dead, Cannibal Holocaust or SS Experiment Camp!). It was either just before, or just after, all these so called ‘video nasties’ were taken from the shelf (a shameful episode, that saw people unlawfully sent to prison for distributing films that are tame compared to what is shown on TV these days), so I was quite happy to debate with Mr Glover. My question to him was, if he is so against violence on TV, why did he appear in one of the biggest (and best!) horror films of recent years, and why was he happy to appear regularly on World of Sport as a wrestling villain. Okay, perhaps not a particularly strong argument, but hey, I was only 15. He didn’t particularly appreciate though it and shut me down in a way that made me thankful he wasn’t my teacher..

              But almost every other question was a variation on what Rik Mayall was like. Even after it became pretty obvious that he didn’t know him from Adam. “What was he like?” “Did he do any jokes when you were filming?” “Did you think he was funny?” “Why didn’t they let him speak cos he’s reight funny?’ etc.

    • Interesting stuff about The Magdala, but it’s closed, not just due to Covid. There is an application to re-open it, hopefully as a pub. A good owner could make so much of it. I was down there last month, peeked in through the windows – there were two guitars propped up against each other. An interesting tale though, a reminder of the times before Hampstead was taken over by estate agents and cappuccino culture.

      • I used to live very close to the Magdala in the 90s, but it was never one I went in very often. There were so many great pubs within easy walking distance. I spent most of my time in Aldwinkles, which used to be (and then became once again) the White Horse. I only lived across the road and became mates with the landlord. It was one of the two pubs that were usually full of nurses, the other being the Roebuck.

        I used to love the pub crawl from the hospital down to Camden, even though the choice of beer wasn’t so great back then. I don’t half miss those days. Seems like a lifetime away now. I imagine that not all the pubs are still open.

  16. The Shady Lady on Oxford Road Manchester next to the railway station. Their attitude to the licensing laws for under-18s was ‘relaxed’ shall we say. Due to its location was a key stopping-off-point for away fans. One particularly memorable lunchtime we dropped in to see a group of (if memory serves me well, though difficult to see what match it could be) Celtic fans including one standing on the table and urinating. These things bothered you less as a teenager.

    The University and City Arms, Cowley Road, Oxford in the mid-80s. Far enough down the Cowley Road to be very much city. The jukebox was stacked with Dubliners, Christy Moore etc. but above all the Wolfe Tones. When The Soldier’s Song was played everyone stood up. Also my introduction, once trustworthiness had been earned, to the lock-in. Drinking in the virtual pitch dark….

    • Indeed I do, it is one of the exceptions that proves the rule, however. There are a scattering of decent pubs, more, to be fair, than when I lived nearer, as new ones appear, (or did, pre-C19,)in the city centre. The Prince has always been worth a visit when in Moseley, I tending to think of Moseley (and some of Kings Heath) as being more a part of Brighton and Hove than of greater Brummagem.
      Back when I moved to work in Brum, 1980, it was all shitty massive roadhouse inns, all so designed to root out any risk of political discussions taking place, as happened in smaller alehouses, which were closed down, by and large, in the 19th and early 20th century. True dat. The lack of any decent ales in Brum may also have continued the decline, again until relatively recently.

  18. Well, I did Brizzle up the page, but forgot to mention Plymouth, my home town.

    Plymouth has the inestimable virtue of being the location for The Dolphin, on the Barbican. Bass from the barrel. Tables with edges to keep your pint from sliding off. Rowdy and lively clientele. Used to be the haunt of Beryl Cook, who had her first exhibition in Plymouth (my old French teacher – Bernie Samuels – used to run the Arts Centre there) and her paintings still adorn the walls. Last time I got truly spannered in there was a few years back now on the piss with my brother and his mate Dave and his girlfriend. I still remember the Bass hangover. Cracking boozer.

  19. There are loads of fantastic pubs in Leeds. One is a good 15 min walk from the city centre, has about 4 different rooms on 2 floors, even has a bar to get served from in the corridor between rooms. Great beer and often has interesting things going on there. Although last time I was there it was full of Leeds U fans!

    Surely some other Afterworders can help me out with the name…

    I do like large Northern pubs, some great ones in Liverpool too, one in Lark Lane that had regular live jazz, saw Ian McCulloch having a pint in here a few times.

  20. I’m not sure they still exist but in London there used to be plenty of bleak, permanently near-empty pubs that must surely have only been there for money laundering purposes because they can’t have made money through the business of selling drinks.

    Atmosphere – nil. Good-natured landlord? – rarely. Food – er…salt & vinegar or cheese and onion?

    At least they didn’t pretend they were a thriving hub of the community and if you went in for a quiet pint and a read of the paper, they left you alone.

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