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...