Wednesfield to Wednesbury: Wednesday Pub Ticking

I made the 2-mile trip on bus 59 from Wolverhampton to Wednesfield, once a Staffordshire village, now fully swallowed up into the West Midlands conurbation.
It's home to around 33,000 folk.
And it's the birthplace of Dexys Midnight Runners frontman Kevin Rowland.  The only time I ever saw Rowland on stage was the somewhat divisive '99 Reading festival appearance - probably not the era to go to if Wednesfield ever commission a commemorative statue.

I didn't set out to visit the Wetherspoon's, but I was in need of some food and this seemed the easiest option.
Despite it not looking the most salubrious of the chain's locations...

Oi!  Sit on the picnic bench properly.

Royal Tiger (41-43 High Street, Wednesdfield, WV11 1ST - web)
Scanning the two banks of hand pumps, the only beer outside of the standard Spoon's real ale range appeared to be Nethergate 'Old Growler', so that's what I opted for.

The building was a bakery for many years with the original Royal Tiger pub being the next door neighbour between 1875 and 1993.  The name, sounding more suited to a restaurant, probably originates from Wednesfield's history of manufacturing animal traps.

This was a pretty run-of-the-mill Spoon's experience - a varied and fair number of folk in on a midweek afternoon.
But the young lady behind the bar did call me "mate" twice, which briefly made me feel like I was in 'Line of Duty'.  

Wetherspoon pub life

Energised by Mangalorean cauliflower curry, I made the short walk around the corner in search of a Heritage pub...

Vine (35 Lichfield Road, Wednesfield, WV11 1TN - web)
Wow!  What a cracking pub the Vine is.
"A rare and intact example of a simple inter-war, urban, working class pub", says the listing in the heritage pub guide.

Opened in 1937, the central bar has two sides serving an almost identical smoke room and public bar.  There's bench seating around the sides and proper pub tables and stools, with a more recent carpet hiding a terrazo floor to upset the heritage enthusiasts.

Okay, so it probably didn't have flat-screen TV's in 1937, showing the horse racing and listing the beers on offer (a standard feature in Black Country Ales pubs).
You know there'll be no shortage of beers on offer in a Black Country Ales pub too, with 10 hand pumps lining the bar, the majority their own beers plus a couple of guests.
I enjoyed a local super pale ale from Froth Blowers named 'Anthem', whist 'Light My Fire', the Kinks and a bit of Springsteen played in the background.

Now that's what I call bench seating

For the second part of this post, I'm heading to the similarly named Wednesbury, the easiest route being back to Wolverhampton then 15-minutes on the smart West Midlands Metro.

Wednesbury covers a larger area, with a fair amount to read on their Wikipedia entry and a population of around 39,000 folks.
Amongst the notable natives and residents, the town seems to have produced an impressive number of footballers.
From my own Nottingham Forest perspective, 60's left-bank Alan Hinton and FA Cup winning manager Billy Walker were both born in Wednesbury.
Yes, hard as it may be for youngsters to believe, Forest did once win stuff.

Oh look, the Bescott Stadium is just down the road, where we'll probably be playing in a season or two. 

The town has a few impressive historic buildings...
   

And Boobielous
You don't get proper shops like this in the Westgate Centre.

Just as in Wednesfield, I made the Wetherspoon my first port of call. 

The Bellwether (3-4 Walsall Street, Wednesbury, WS10 9BZ - web)
This time my reasoning was that it is in the 2021 Good Beer Guide.
As with the Royal Tiger, most of the hand pumps displayed the usual Spoon's suspects of Abbot, Doom Bar, Ruddles et al.  Just the one guest, which was an Oakham 'Inferno': decent beer in decent condition.

A stroll into the residential side streets to the north of the town centre took me to the second of the Good Beer Guide listings...

Olde Leathern Bottel (40 Vicarage Road, Wednesbury, WS10 9DW)
Walking along streets of terraced houses, it's quite a surprise to suddenly come across this attractive old pub which looks every bit the village local.

It scores quite well on Ye Olde Pub check list...
☑ Timber Framed, with date of origin in big font
☑ Quirky spelling of name
☑ Tale that Dick Turpin once visited
☑ Haunted snug (see the entry on Mysterious Britain & Ireland)

Enter through the more discreet left-hand door and you find yourself in a nice looking trad bar.  Enter through the more obvious door, as I did, and a corridor leads down the side of the bar to more rooms out back.

I grabbed a pint of Robinson's 'Dizzy Blonde' which has switched its pump clip for one with plane propellers rather than the less-woke previous version.
I'm not sure why I opted for this instead of the ever-popular-in-the-West-Midlands Butty Bach.
The Dizzy Blonde was okay, in good condition, although I'd had far too many blonde ales in the past couple of days.

The arrival of a huge funeral party traipsing through to the back room was my cue to leave and head back to the tram stop.

Next Up: Continuing the West Midlands theme with a couple of Birmingham boozers...

Wolverhampton Pub Wandering

It's been a fair few years since I was last in Wolverhampton, visiting the city centre pubs pre-football at Molineux.  This time around, on a grey Tuesday in August with no footy to worry about, I planned to visit a handful of suggestions from the Good Beer Guide.

Starting with the Hogshead, handily close to the train station and open conveniently early.

Hogshead (186 Stafford Street, Wolverhampton, WV1 1NA - web)
Every bit the city centre boozer that I imagine gets quite lively on a weekend, at first glance it's not the most obvious choice for the beer-guide selection panel.
Ah, but they do have a long run of hand pumps offering a whopping choice of 10 ales.

Being there at 11:30am, there were couple of coffee drinkers and one old boy on the Carlsberg, so none of those hand pumps had seen much action by this point.
I randomly picked the nearest one to me - Newbridge 'Solaris' which took a while to pour and can diplomatically be described as 'okay'.

I quite liked the Hogshead - a real mix of styles, offering something for everyone, from the craft ale wall to the gin shelf and cocktail menu.
My US-style booth had it's own little sports TV screen at the end of it.  Great for match-day - less exciting on Tuesday morning with news that Tammy Abraham had been sold for a whole lot of money being repeated on a loop.

Just around the corner from the Hogshead was a music wall, allowing you to scan the discs to listen to key tracks celebrating the musical heritage of Wolverhampton.
Hang on, no 'Spaceman' by Babylon Zoo?!

Onward to the pub, in this case heritage listed, with a fine attractive frontage...

Posada (48 Lichfield Street, Wolverhampton, WV1 1DG)

We missed this pub on my previous visit to the city, when it had been packed to the rafters with Wolves supporters.

It couldn't have been much different on a Tuesday afternoon - just three other punters made their way in whilst I was there, with the landlord spending most of his time at a stool on the customer side of the bar.

With a 'coming soon' sign on the Salopian and another pump clip turned around, the only ale option was a Holden's 'Golden Glow'.  Which I was happy with - a decent, local pint.
I took this through the archway to the attractive rear room, with it's leather cushioned bench seating either side of the fireplace.

Not for the first time in a heritage pub, the music didn't quite fit the historic surroundings... 
Miguel Rios 'Song of Joy', followed by Royal House 'Can You Party'.
Things got a little more mainstream after, but that was some of the oddest pub music of the year so far.  Shazam was involved - I'm not that good at identifying music.

Wolverhampton has three micro pubs listed in the current beer guide, but my quandaries about which to fit into my itinerary were solved by two of them being shut at the beginning of the week.
It was a couple of hours later that I made the walk south of the ring-road to visit the one micro open on a Tuesday, The Starting Gate.

Good to see Gremlins not forgotten in 2021... 

It took me around 20-minutes to get to Penn Fields, although that includes the time taken to try and find the right exit from the ring road underpass.

The Starting Gate (134 Birches Barn Road, Penn Fields, WV3 7BG - web)
'Micro pub' works well as a description to differentiate trad pubs from those that have been transformed from one-time shops, offices, or in this case, banks.
But 'micro' doesn't work quite so well as far as size is concerned.  The Starting Gate was bigger than the Posada, extending beyond the front room, past a spiral staircase, and into a back room with more seating.  Bars on the windows in this room reflect the building's previous use.

Most of the customers occupied the front room, decorated with horse racing memorabilia.  The bar was manned by the kind of gaffer who can start pouring a Proper Job for one of his regulars with the merest nod of the head and not a word spoken.
Other ale choices were Goffs 'Cheltenham Gold' or a Backyard 'Blonde', the latter of which was my pick of the three.

I timed my departure just right to hop on a bus just around the corner from the pub which whisked me back to the centre.

I then trekked out West, past the shiny modern Marston's offices and Banks's brewery. 
In this residential area there was a nice little triangle of three Beer Guide pubs to try. 
The first of which was the Combermere Arms which turned out to be a bit of a gem...

Combermere Arms (90 Chapel Ash, Wolverhampton, WV3 0TY)
Nice lamp-post in the front garden.
Attractive old building, dating back to 1860. 
Comfortable no-nonsense basic pub rooms to the right of the central corridor.
But you don't need to know any of that.
All you need to know is that they've got a tree growing in the gents toilets!

As covered by local newspaper the Express and Star - "Hap-pee days!  Pub's loo tree continues to flourish".  (Bit of a news shortage that week, I suspect)

Picture of the pub landlord and tree
borrowed from the local paper.
Cos asking random strangers if they can take a 
picture of you in the gents is inadvisable.

I finished a nice pint of AJ's 'Beertrice' in the Combermere Arms, then made the short walk along Merrivale Road to reach the next pub...

The Chindit (113 Merridale Road, Wolverhampton, WV3 9SE)
I have to admit the unusual name was puzzling me until I looked it up. The Chindits were a special-ops regiment which operated behind enemy lines in Burma in the second world war, for whom the first landlord of the pub served.

Two real ales were on offer, both from West Yorkshire's Ossett Brewery.
I un-sociably took my 'White Rat' (in top condition) through to the empty front room, which contains a stage area for live music and a Wurlitzer jukebox.

And on to the last of the three pubs...

The Royal Oak (70 Compton Road, Wolverhampton, WV3 9PH)
The Royal Oak had the most bustling and lively atmosphere of all the pubs I'd visited during this day.
It's a traditional stand-alone street corner boozer, welcoming and inviting, with various areas within partitioned to provide plenty of cosy seating.  The improved weather of the evening had also drawn a decent crowd to the garden at one side.
A Marston's house, I had my chance to try a beer from the local brewing giants - a Banks's Mild, which may just have been my unpredictable best beer of the day.

And after that, I called it a night.
I must have worn myself out - I walked straight past the Great Western on the way to my hotel without being tempted.

Next up, after a good nights sleep: Wetherspoon's in Wednesbury on Wednesday.

Where Have You Been Tonight?

York Pub Explorations

Our list of York pubs to visit was rather un-sensibly long.
The kind of list that has Mrs Prop Up the Bar declaring that we need a 2-week detox afterwards.

I'm not gonna try and cover everywhere we went - it would drag on and on and get vaguer and vaguer - strange how I have such little memory of the pubs visited after our beers in the House of Trembling Madness...

So here goes with a selective few, starting with the Brew York tap...

Brew York Tap (Unit 6, Enterprise Complex, Walmgate, York, YO1 9TT - web)
I suspect I made a bit of mistake here when confronted with the choice of sitting inside or out.  You just know that sitting outdoors in nice weather next to the River Foss was the sensible option, but I kinda wanted to see the beer hall.

This is located in an old maltings, a large, high-roofed first floor room with lots of seating and street-art murals adorning the walls.
I bet it's buzzing when it's busy, but mid-afternoon on a glorious day when everyone's outside there were a grand total of 6 people in the big room.

Mrs PropUptheBar picked the real stunner on the beer list, which I promptly stole from her.  The cask 'Honey I Shrunk the Impys' was an oatmeal stout which packed all the flavour of those double-figure ABV imperial stouts, whilst keeping it sensible at 5.4%.  Wonderful stuff!


Onward, to a couple of traditional boozers, starting with the York CAMRA 2020 pub of the year...

Slip Inn (Clementhorpe, YO23 1AN)
This community local is just down the road from the heritage-listed Swan, covered in the previous post.
It's a lovely pub with two main rooms, a snug to the side and a patio to the rear.

Beers available on our visit came from Grey Trees, Abbeydale, Leeds Brewery and Rudgate, plus my pick, the Great Newsome 'Holderness Dark'.
A lovely pint, in a wonderful, comfortable, laid back boozer.  

Located next to southerly parts of the city walls by Fishergate, we'd passed the Phoenix on our previous days wall-walking. 

The Phoenix (75 George Street, York, YO1 9PT - web)
I went to this fantastic York Heritage Pub and all I brought you was this lousy picture...

Proper pub stools, piano, facemask and dog's backside

Take a look at the Heritage Site for some pictures of what makes it special inside.
We visited prior to restrictions being lifted, so were stuck on a table in the back corner, by an out-of-use bar billiards table with piles of junk on top of it.
This is somewhere I'd like to revisit and be able to stroll around and pick my own seat.  I couldn't resist including it here because I'd got that lovely blue-sky picture of the pub.


Somewhere else I wanted to visit was the Market Tap, a joint venture by Thornbridge Brewery and Euro importers Pivovar UK.
Pivovar was what stuck in my mind...
So when I saw "Pivni" it seemed close enough. 
Hence, this is the one that we went in by mistake...

Sunglasses couple on the far table are the first to suss how suspicious I am

Pivni (6 Patrick Pool, York, YO1 8BB - web)
Nice tudor-fronted building though - olde worle style ground floor bar with lots of hops hanging from the wooden beams - and a decent ale from Bristol Beer Factory.
"So it's the wrong pub... well that's a pint we didn't need," said Mrs PropUptheBar, fully capturing the joys of pub ticking.

The Market Cat was just a few minutes walk away, craftily hidden behind a man and his pictures...

Market Cat (6 Jubbergate, York, YO1 8RT - web)
This bar opened at the tail-end of 2018, in a three-storey building previously occupied by pawnbrokers Herbert Brown & Son.
We grabbed a seat by the open windows on the ground floor, with the grand mahogany bar in front of us.  Among the fine Thornbridge ales on offer there are also a number of guests, one of which - Atom 'Dark Matter' chocolate stout - was my pick.  And very nice it was too.

It's a long trek up the stairs to the second floor to the visit the facilities.
But this does also give you the chance to look at the cellar (if we're still allowed to call it that when it's at the top of the building?), all the casks visible behind a glass screen.

On the way back down, I stopped to take a picture of the pretty marvelous vista from the first floor tables, looking out over the market.

The Market Cat and Pivni had bridged the gap between the traditional pubs and the craft bars (I was just reading that Thornbridge 'Jaipur' was beer-zero when it comes to UK craft ales).
For the final bar in this post, I'm going full-on craft...

House of Trembling Madness (48 Stonegate, York, YO1 8AS - web)
You can tell from the exterior that this is a pretty impressive place.  It's a Georgian townhouse, renovated a few years back to create a "craft beer mansion".

The beer list was long and spectacular, with the staff proving helpful to assist our picking.
Here's what I ended up with:
Old Chimneys 'Good King Henry' 10% Russian imperial stout
Cloudwater 'Reign or Shine' 6.2% stout
Whiplash Brewery 'Velouria' 8.2% imperial IPA
Yep, stupidly strong one, Cloudwater one, and the one named after a Pixies track. 

All the beers were great, as were our surroundings in the wonderful quirky ground floor room.

The House of Trembling Madness provided a touch of class to my on-going series of smut found in gent's bathrooms... 

Cultured smut

We were spoilt in York - fantastic weather; great quality and great choice of beers; heritage pubs and modern craft bars...

I'll leave you with an evening view across the River Ouse...

Cheers! 🍻

York Heritage Pub Wonders

After the North Yorkshire coast and moors, we arrived in the city of York, where it turns out they've got a fair few pubs.

In sightseeing mode, we set out in the glorious sunshine to walk the 2-miles around the city walls. 
The northern section is popular and busy, delivering some cracking views of York Minster.  Then most folks seem to give up after reaching Goodramgate leaving a large, admittedly less spectacular, section of the walk quiet and peaceful.

Reaching Fishergate I spotted the Masons Arms across the other side of the road...
Heritage Pub.  Lunchtime.  Let's do it!

Well, at least let's do it after waiting an age for a break in the traffic to take a picture, then another age to get across the road ourselves...

Masons Arms (6 Fishergate, York, YO10 4AB - web)
The pub was built in Gothic revival style in 1935 as a flagship project for the Tadcaster Tower Brewery.  At the same time, the York City Gatehouse (built in 1830) was being demolished, so the architects took advantage of this and salvaged the fireplace and oak panelling to incorporate into the lounge bar of the Masons.


The pub suffered a blow in 2016 when it was badly damaged as devastating floods struck York.  Once the water subsided it took 7 months to repair the damage, including replacing the flooring throughout and reupholstering the seating.

It does look quite magnificent.  We settled on a large table in front of the bar in what would once have been the separate 'sitting room'.

The pub also has quite majestic 1930's lavatories.  You can tell I was sober and sensible as I made no attempt to photograph the loos.
Instead, here's what the bar looks like...

Sadly there wasn't much custom on a  midweek lunchtime - I wonder how many people don't get this far, lured into the ugly Wetherspoon's just across the road next to the Postern Tower instead?

But you don't get to listen to 'In the Navy' in Spoon's, the pick of the bunch on the retro pop soundtrack.

The house beer is Westgate 'Masons Blonde' a re-badged version, I guess, of the Wakefield brewers regular blonde ale.
Added bonus: pub pic place mats!

Continuing back to the wall walk,we were excited about seeing the castle just around the corner.
Dammit - scuppered again...

Significant scaffolding

Crossing the River Ouse and heading down Bishopgate, one of York's classic pubs is to be found...

The Swan (16 Bishopgate Street, York, YO23 1JH)
This is one of the cities big three heritage pubs, along with the Golden Ball and Blue Bell.
It dates back to 1861 and was later acquired by Joshua Tetley & Sons who gave it a 1930's makeover.  And that 30's design is pretty much what you see today.

You enter to a stand-up lobby where the bar is located, with doors either side of this leading to the public bar and smoke room.

Bench seating and hand sanitizer in the public bar

We grabbed a table at the side of the lobby facing the bar and next to the inquisitive greyhound in the picture at the top of the post.
The staff gave us a knowledgeable run-down of the cask and keg ales on offer and (being the fool that I am) I picked the strongest of the lot, the 6% 'Jotun', brewed in Sheffield by Neepsend Brewery.

Heading back into the fearsomely busy city centre, we made our way to what is reputed to be York's oldest pub - Ye Olde Starre Inne.
Seriously - what's going on with that spelling?

Ye Olde Starre Inne (40 Stonegate, York, YO1 8AS - web)
Tucked back from the street down an alleyway there's not much to see of the Starre as you wander down Stonegate.  So they made up for it with the impressive and unmissable gallows sign that straddles the whole street.

Much altered over the years, the most notable historic feature is the old decorative glass screen.  Brett Bros were 19th century York brewers who owned the pub when the screen was made for an 1890's refit.

There are multiple rooms within the Olde Starre - I'm sure I didn't see half of it - whilst there are also several outdoor courtyard areas.  The hot weather had driven most people outside with a mix of tourists, shoppers and a couple of hen parties having found their way down the alleyway for refreshments.

It's a Greene King pub, with a range of guest ales to save you from GK IPA - in this case we made a rare diversion from Yorkshire beers into South Wales for a Tiny Rebel 'Birra Colada'.

For the final pub in this post, we headed out of town into the Holgate district.
The stained glass dividers between seats give a clue as to the pub name...

The Fox (168 Holgate Road, York, YO24 4DQ)
It's a rarity being able to turn up in a popular heritage pub on a Friday evening and be able to mooch around, appreciating the fine interior and taking pictures of empty rooms.  The fine weather meant that almost all the customers were outside in a large garden where it would have been nigh-on impossible for us to find a seat.
I was more than happy inside.  Just look at it!

The pub was built in 1878 and would once have been the regular for many workers from the nearby engine sheds and locomotive workshops, prior to their closure.

Tetley's gave it a careful 80's makeover, then the latest restoration has been completed by Ossett Brewery who currently run the pub.

We finished an evening of pub explorations at the Fox, sat in a wonderful room, with a tasty pint of Osset 'Excelsius', and a soundtrack of decent indie rock. 

Take a glance at the Heritage Pub Website and you'll find another 8 listings alongside the four pubs on this post.  We only scratched the surface, being as we also had a couple of beer guide entries I wanted to visit and some more modern crafty bars in the city.
More of which on the next post.