My Top Five Pub Discoveries in 2024
A lot of my pub trips this year have been guided by my quest to visit all art deco pubs in the UK. I didn’t just visit art deco pubs of course, and came across a few classic pubs which I’d never been to before. The top five pubs this year go from Tynemouth in the north of England to Brighton in the south plus a hop across the Irish Sea to Belfast.
Art Deco Pubs in the UK, Part 3: The Suburbs
This is the third and final part of a survey of art deco pubs in the UK and looks at those in the suburbs.
Art Deco Pubs in the UK, Part 2: the City Centres
This is the second of a three part survey of art deco pubs in the UK and looks at those in city and town centres.
Art Deco Pubs in the UK, Part 1: Beside the Sea
This is the first of three posts looking at art deco pubs across the UK. This one is about art deco and moderne pubs in seaside towns.
My Top Five Pub Discoveries in 2023
I managed to go to about 60 new pubs in 2023 which was quite an achievement for me. It did mean it was very difficult to narrow the choice down to the top five, but I’ve chosen a varied selection from Norfolk in the East to Herefordshire in the west (of England) up to Glasgow in the north.
A stroll around the heritage pubs of Maida Vale
Maida Vale is a well off residential area in north west London known for its streets of mansion blocks. It’s also home to Little Venice, the canal basin on the Regents Canal famous for multiple narrowboats and waterside cafes and pubs. What the area is less well known for is its collection of exceptional Victorian heritage pubs. This short walk takes in four pubs, all well worth a visit to see the extravagant steps brewers and entrepreneurs took to ensure their pub outdid their neighbours in style and elegance.
Translucent Style: Cut & Etched Glass in Pubs
Cutting, etching and embossing glass was perfected by the Victorians and put to excellent effect in many of the hundreds of pubs they built towards the end of the 19th century. Almost all Victorian and Edwardian urban pubs had decorative translucent glass and although most of it has been torn out, much still remains. Etched glass was still popular in the 1920s and 1930s, although the intricate art nouveau patterns had given way to simpler geometric designs. Pubs continue to add etched glass windows today, often to replace glass that was removed in the clear glass craze of the 1990s and early 2000s, and sometimes to replace original glass with modern copies.
Harry Redfern’s Carlisle Legacy: the ‘model pubs’ of the State Management Scheme
One of the key proposals of the Carlisle State Management Scheme was to reconstruct existing pubs and build new pubs to an ideal agreed by the various interests behind alcohol reduction. The scheme needed an architect and the person chosen was Harry Redfern, who was to oversee the programme until the early 1940s. Redfern’s pubs were revolutionary and became a huge influence on the ‘improved pubs’ movement that was taking off across the country in the inter-war period.
My Top Five Pub Discoveries in 2022
2022 was another good year for discovering UK pubs I hadn’t visited before, and I’ve narrowed these down to five of the best. So what’s the criteria? I confess to a bias towards “proper pubs”, those “whose primary function… is for people to meet and socialise over a few drinks”.
Ceramic brewery plaques on pubs
In the mid 20th century some breweries began to add colourful ceramic plaques to their pubs to promote their wares. The design was the same on all pubs and the plaques were cemented into the wall meaning that hundreds are still visible today.