Horsham Pub Explorations

A trip to West Sussex to a town that I've been keen to visit for some time, tempting us with good looking pubs and bars and two brewery tap rooms.

My pre-noon day started in Wetherspoon's which I seem to be subconsciously ticking whenever there's one nearby.  Mrs PropUptheBar and the dog hung out in the sunshine by the mini-waterfall in front of the Olive Branch, on account of Spoons not liking the dog and him not caring much for them either. 

The Lynd Cross (1 Springfield Way, Horsham, RH12 2PJ)
They weren't missing much, to be honest.
This is an old retail unit that used to be Horsham Pine Shop.  Now everyone in Horsham can have a £2.29 pint of Jaipur, but no-one's got any pine furniture.
It was in a bit of a state of chaos as the staff tried to juggle app orders, clearing the tables, and getting muddled on the till when the chap before me changed his mind from Freedom Breakfast to Large full English.
There wasn't much in the way of unusual guest beers, with an old South West favourite - Bays 'Devon Dumpling' - being the only lesser-seen ale on offer.  On reasonable form and just £1 for my swift half. 

Right, let's do the first Good Beer Guide pub...

The King's Arms (64 Bishopric, Horsham, RH12 1QN)
This used to be the King & Barnes tap, when the local brewery still existed 100 yards away.  It looks like it's gone through a few incarnations since, currently a wet-led free house.

It's a cracker.
Pianola in the doorway; 'bring your own food' sign; second-hand books on the fireplace (very Dean Koontz heavy); a mellow pub dog; and an enthusiastic chap behind the bar pointing out his local craft offerings.
On our visit, the cask line-up looked like this:

I went with the Downlands 'Cascade', a 3.8% recreation of the original Hophead.
A lovely flavoursome pale ale with a crisp bitter finish.

We had quite a trek to our next destination.  Through the busy town centre - past the railway station and over the train lines - round Harwood Way through the Horsham 'burbs until we found an alleyway into an industrial estate.
Brewery tap?  You guessed it...

Horsham Brewery Tap (22 Blatchford Close, Horsham, RH13 5RG)
This was of the more basic variety of tap rooms, just a couple of beer-fest-style benches outside and more seating and a darts board inside next to the brewing kit.

I wasn't sure if the hand pumps on the bar were just for show, but happily one of them dispensed my pick of 'Mick's Mild', a 5.2% smooth smoky brew.  Not the cheapest at £5.80, but such a great ale that I'm not grumbling.
Other than that, plenty of choice on the keg lines...

The tap room needed a few more customers to liven up our visit.  I ambled across the yard to investigate the vintage street lights laid out on the ground at what turned out to be the heritage lighting specialist neighbours.  The barman came out five minutes later and picked up the barrier which had blown over with it's 'no entry' signs, lest we spy on secrets of the heritage lighting trade.

Nothing to do, then, except admire the welly art...

Turns out everyone was at the other brewery tap nearby on this particular afternoon.
It's a 6 or 7 minute walk to get to Brolly Brewing - just follow the blokes from the next table at the Horsham Brewery who've set off moments before you. 

Brolly Brewing (Unit 8, Redkiln Close, Horsham, RH13 5QL)
Brolly have a pretty nifty set-up: their outdoor space about as pleasant as you can get on an industrial estate, complete with food van, musician, and perches on beer barrels.
Step inside the unit and it's divided in two with bar and seating on one side, brewery beyond stools and a propping ledge.
Shiny brewing kit picture alert!

There was a great line-up here at this 2025 Good Beer Guide destination.  Four cask hand pulls with two of their own brews alongside guests from Verdant and Oakham. Plus lots of tempting stuff on the keg lines including a sour and a double IPA.

I tried both the casks - happy to see another dark mild, the super 'Lifeline' being a more sensible 3.8%, the 'Spanky McDanky' hitting the spot too.
And we filled up with Mexican street food from the Saltio food truck.  Just don't ask Mrs PropUptheBar how her tummy was the next day after the super-hot salsa sauce and sour beer.

We could have sat all afternoon at Brolly - a lovely place with a very relaxed and friendly atmosphere on a Sunday afternoon.
But we needed to check in to our hotel and complete the beer guide pubs of town.
The first of which was a Brunning & Price, looking very rural in my picture, despite being just a few steps away from the modern pedestrianised shopping streets.

The Black Jug (31 North Street, Horsham, RH12 1RJ)
You already know what it looks like inside - several spaces surrounding a central bar, robust furniture, excessive old pictures, 'Reserved' signs on every single table.
But I've rarely had a bad beer in Brunning and Price and was pleased to see my third mild of the day - Langham Brewery's 'Triple XXX' 4.4% mild being another winner.

 

In the posh environs of B&P you get artistic heritage mild smut in the gents WC...

But never mind those sepia ladies in a state of undress.
I'm more concerned about where that Albert Brenot champagne cork is going...

We survived the Black Jug, steering clear of any late afternoon diners or reserved tables and sipping our ales in the secluded leafy courtyard out back.
The afternoon was rolling by alarmingly quickly and it was time for us to get checked  into the Travelodge.
I had apparently not ticked the ;room with a view' box... 

But a fine vista, balcony, jacuzzi and mini-bar would have been wasted on us.  There was no time for loitering as we had pizza and porter in mind at the Malt Shovel.
Handily just a few minutes walk from the hotel.

The Malt Shovel (15 Springfield Road, Horsham, RH12 2PG)
Another fine establishment, even if it wasn't especially busy on a Sunday evening.  The Malt Shovel is a fine town centre pub split into two halves with stone floor, dark wood panels, collection of old bottles on a high shelf, guard dog to navigate at the front door.

The real ale options were Burning Sky 'Waves Away' or 'Aurora', Downlands 'Oatmeal Stout', Surrey Hills 'Three Peaks' and a Thornbridge 'Lukas'.
A fine selection from which I went with the stout, brewed at Small Dole just inland from Brighton (they have an interesting and rather harsh policy on random brewery visitors on their website!)
No local CAMRA mags to read, so I had to make do with the first couple of volumes of the Licensed Houses and their Management books...

I really liked the Malt Shovel - a local music venue too - so was sorry to read local reports that the longstanding tenants are seemingly being ousted, putting its future of gigs and quality beer in doubt.

Next up, Piries Bar defeated us, plunging the Horsham Good Beer Guide completion into jeopardy.  How the heck had this small bar down an alleyway got a queue and two security guards on the door?  Sunday Karaoke, I later discovered.

So that just left us with the Anchor Tap...

The Anchor Tap (16 East Street, Horsham, RH12 1HL)
A stylish modern ale house with a lovely tiled floor and impressive selection of craft and cask. Enough chocolate porters and Vault City sours to keep Mrs PropUptheBar here for a second, as we settled into the quieter back room.
I stuck with a sensible cask, a well-kept Vibrant Forest 'PUPA' pale ale.

Horsham had proved a bit of a winner for a sunny Bank Holiday Sunday afternoon.
Good beer throughout our trip.  A decent varied selection of venues from the rickety bench outside the brewery tap to the cushioned leather benches in the ale house.
I just can't believe I didn't get to all the GBG pubs because I was beaten by karaoke.  Karaoke!  Bah! 

Wide Awake in Herne Hill

A whistle-stop pub crawl preceding the 2025 Wide Awake Festival in Brockwell Park.
A year ago, I managed to wear myself out before seeing any bands by racing around Spoons, pubs and a brewery tap in Brixton.  Surely I've learnt a lesson?

Veering east of Brixton, I intended to approach Brockwell Park by overground rail to Herne Hill.
Via Spoons, pubs and a brewery tap.  Of course.

Navigating across London on the Bakerloo line, I surfaced at Elephant & Castle, somewhere I haven't been for years and which is now completely unrecognisable.
My early-doors destination was a JDW in a sixties block that once housed the DHSS.

The Rockingham Arms (119 Newington Causeway, Elephant & Castle,London, SE1 6BN)
This is one of those pubs that elicits the CAMRA description "draws a mixed and lively crowd".  Yep, it certainly looked like it did, busy before midday with a diverse clientele.
The guest beer selection wasn't overly exciting with the only lesser-seen beer being Portobello 'Buckingham Best'.  Which was quite possibly past its best.

I just about made room for my pint amongst the table clutter...

Then passed 20-minutes frowning every time I took a sip of the beer and checking out the stage times and site map for the rest of the day.

Who'd be a festival organiser? 
Wide Awake! has been beset by problems this year.  Unceremoniously shoved out the Saturday slot to a Friday by Field Day fest (who got the sunshine though, eh?!).  Threatened by some local residents who won a legal challenge against Brockwell Live, organisers of the series of one-day events in the park, something which could have prevented any of them going ahead.  Under fire from some quarters for featuring headliners Kneecap, one of whom has been charged with terror offences. 
And I think I'm having a hard day at work when my headset stops working during a Teams meeting.

Luckily it was still going ahead, and to get me one step closer to the festival entrance, I boarded a train at Elephant & Castle overground and travelled the two stops to Herne Hill.  Step out the station and the 2025 Good Beer Guide listed Commercial is right in front of you.

The Commercial Tavern (210-212 Railton Road, Herne Hill, SE24 0JT)
Doing a decent pre-festival trade with all outdoor seats taken and a fair number of punters spread throughout the two rooms within. 

It's a nice enough pub, with a few traditional features disguised by the paint job and modern furnishings.  And seabass fillets and sandwiches for over a tenner aren't traditional pub fare.
There were three handpumps, the Harvey's 'Sussex Best' being pulled through when I arrived, leaving me with a choice of 'Wainwright' or Sharp's 'Twin Coast'.
In a plastic glass, 'cos you can't trust all these folks on their way to a music festival.

One reasonable pint of Twin Coast later, it was just a minute-or-so walk from the pedestrian street that the station and Commercial sit on to the railway arches with a brewery tap.

Bird House Brewery and Tap Room (Arch 1127, Bath Factory Estate, 41 Norwood Road, Herne Hill, SE24 9AJ)
This was former home of one-time Canopy Brewery, prior to Bird House re-opening the railway arch in March 2024.
It's probably better to enjoy your cocktails, beer and pizza al-fresco on tables in the pleasant passageway running past the two arches that house Birdhouse.
But I'm a sucker for sitting by the brew kit under a corrugated ceiling.

There were six of the breweries own beers on draft: lager, pale, white, gold, amber, and stout.
Despite the weather tempting me towards the pale brews, I enjoyed the robust stout, entertained by a playlist featuring a host of the artists set to play the main stages later in the day.

Time for one more before sitting in a field drinking (marginally more) expensive beer in paper cups?
Yep, I figured I could squeeze in the three star ★★★ heritage pub.

The Half Moon (10 Half Moon Lane, Herne Hill, SE24 9HU)
The last time I was in here was in 2010 when space rockers Mugstar played in a back room launching their latest album (which isn't quite as impressive as it would be if I could tell you I saw U2 here in 1980). 
Its time as a music venue came to an end in 2013, the back space now opened up to bright airy dining.  But it's the front snug that you really want to go and sit in.

The run of hand-pained mirrors is something else...

There was an inn on this site back in the 18th century but the pub we see today dates back to 1896.  It was designed in a luxurious Jacobethan Revival style by architect J.W. Brooker, it's opulence due to the surrounding area being a prosperous home to the merchant classes, further enhanced by the arrival of the railway.

Fullers took over the pub in the 2010's and gave it a make-over.
So no surprise to see Pride and Hophead as the cask choice.
I know, I know...Dark Star 'Hophead' isn't the beer it once was, but I'm pretty impressed by the glass...

That was a decent and enjoyable pint, sat in a spectacular pub, 'Across 110th Street' playing in the background.

Right, onward to the music festival.
No repeat of the enormo-queue that we had to stand in last year, this time waltzing in through the south entrance via a sniffer dog that got tangled around me in overexcitement about my hay-fever tablets.
The craft beer bar was set up with a run of London brewery counters, featuring Brew By Numbers, Queer Brewing, Five Points, Anspach & Hobday, and several more that are skipping my mind right now.

I headed to one that I was unfamiliar with, Blondies, who brew their beer in the NE of the city in Lea Bridge.
Stout at a festival is a rarity and was my pick of the bunch.

That was a really tasty brew, although I'm skeptical what sort of measure I was getting for my hefty £7.90, unable to see quite how much froth you have in those paper cups.
Top marks for the Biriyani food stall who quite possibly filled me up with one of the best tubs of food I've ever had a festival.

I veered very much toward the guitar end of the music choice on a diverse bill.  Gurriers in the Shacklewell Arms tent made enough of a racket to wake up anyone who'd got a bit carried away on a lunchtime pub crawl.  As they finished, I nipped across to the Moth Club marquee to catch the last few tracks by reformed seventies Zamrock group W.I.T.C.H.

Martin Rev confounded.
CMAT was country-pop perfection.
Mannequin Pussy and Sprints were loud and angry about stuff.
L.A's Frankie & the Witch Fingers were my undoubted festival highlight.

And this was the best t-shirt I saw all day.

Everything came to a close with the nation's current most controversial band, Belfast rappers Kneecap drawing a big crowd to the main stage as dusk fell.

Another great day out at this music festival.
I'll be back next year, if they've got the energy to organise it all over again, but where will it be?

Shoreham-by-Sea

A trip to the Sussex coast where we opted to head to Shoreham-by-Sea, situated between Worthing and Brighton & Hove.  It's somewhere that has never been on my radar before, which is what's great about following the Good Beer Guide and picking somewhere with three entries to visit on a Spring afternoon.

Although it's not - let's be honest - the prettiest of coastal towns.  A handful of older buildings around St Mary de Haura church, remnants of the Victorian sea port industry, new-build apartments, houseboats and fancy pads on the seafront on Shoreham Beach.

We walked across the River Adur on the footbridge - too early for the Greene King Waterside Inn - then onto the lengthy decking that saves trudging over the pebbles of the beach.

Shoreham by Sea is twinned with Żywiec, where your favourite Polish beer comes from.
And is the birthplace of Leo Sayer - a missed statue opportunity.
They won't be making any decisions to commission that statue in the old town hall building, which has become the Funky Dragon.

Possibly due to the port industry past and present, Shoreham has its fair share of pubs.  We passed a few picturesque ones along the High Street: the pirate figurehead adorning the Crown and Anchor and the modest tiles of The Marilipins. 
So just typical that our destination was the one that wasn't going to make a good picture thanks to the scaffolding.

Piston Broke (88 High Street, Shoreham-by-Sea, BN43 5DB)
We worried for a moment whether it was actually open, but were pleased to find the door ajar and lights on. Although no-one else had ventured past the scaffolding as it was completely empty.
The bonus of this being we got the best seats in the house, which are obviously these ones...

Beers come straight from the barrel on racking behind the bar.  Three local ales, two from Uckfield's 360° Brewery, one from Langham's of Petworth.

A  so-so 360° 'Bluebell' Sussex bitter for me, the thickest pulp-fest of a cider, East Stour 'Tropical Pineapple', for Mrs PropUptheBar.

Okay, it would have been nice to have some other customers, but we had pole position in the old car seats, Summer of 69 and Freefalling to entertain us.

We needed a bite to eat in a town where all the pubs we planned to visit were wet-led. So we diverted to the pedestrianised East Street where I'd spotted the Tap House earlier which was scoring three-pints on WhatPub for beer quality.

Tap House (16-18 East Street, Shoreham-by-Sea, BN43 5ZE)
More laid-back restaurant/cafe bar than tap house in style, with such painfully dull MOR music that Coldplay would have livened things up.   But they had two hand pumps and half a dozen keg beers offering something a little different.  And a super-enthusiastic server who informed us everything on the menu was "fantastic" and seemed much more impressed with Mrs PropUptheBar's choice of Firebrand 'Wild Honey Belgian Blonde' than my cask Harvey's.

It was the super-light and easy-going Harvey's 'Sisters' table beer that I opted for, with their 'Best' being the other available ale.
And the veggie wellington was indeed fantastic.

 

Suitably fed and watered, we moved on, strolling the 6 or 7 minutes to the east of the town centre to the Duke.  It wasn't scaffolding scuppering my picture here - instead a scruffy van parked slap-bang in the way of a cracking pub frontage.

 

Duke of Wellington (368 Brighton Road, Shoreham-by-Sea, BN43 6RE)
Top marks for the Wellington boot signage.
And an impressive bit of brickwork welcoming you to the public bar...

 

The Duke of Wellington is a regular award winner and Guide regular, with an impressive line up of handpumps adorning the bar.
As I'm not going to see it anywhere else, I picked the house beer 'Wellington American Pale', brewed by the pub in collaboration with Downlands Brewery.  And very nice it was too.

If I'm going to pick fault though, there was surprisingly little seating in a decent sized pub.  One corner of the L-shaped room was taken up by a stage, set for entertainment later in the day, the other by bar billiards, whose players we had to squeeze past a couple of times.  

To make up for the minimal indoor tables, the garden out back is super, with several covered areas including wood burners and Bass signs, providing a bit of character for those stuck outside.

We had one final GBG 2025 pub visit to make before moving on from Shoreham.  This was in a central location close to the train station.  This time decking replacement works spoiled the perfect pic - that and the sky becoming progressively dull.

The Buckingham Arms (35 Brunswick Road, Shoreham-by-Sea, BN43 5WA)
We entered to Walsall on the telly and Kenny & Dolly singing Islands in the Stream.

This was by far the busiest of the three Shoreham GBG pubs, despite being the one whose entry was most likely to raise an eyebrow.
Lots of locals, a handful of them lined up blocking the bar on sturdy stools, not much necessity for the cask hand pumps during the time I was there.

That cask choice was Harvey's 'Best' or 'Georgian Dragon' and a Wadworth '6X'.
The fruity, ruby coloured Georgian Dragon for me - originally brewed as a St George's Day special in 2010 although it's now become an all-year-rounder. 

And with that, I declared Shoreham-by-Sea done.  Although there were plenty more bars for the more committed pub explorer and I suspect it'll be all-change when the 2026 beer guide comes out.

Next up: I move along the coast to Eastbourne, in search of sunshine.