For my first and last blog post of the year I’ve chosen five of the best pubs I visited for the first time in 2025. I’ve done this for the past five years and it’s fair to say that my tastes haven’t changed too much in that time. All of this year’s are ‘proper pubs’ (whatever that means) and four out of the five are ‘heritage pubs’ with a historic interior.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
It was a late start to pub travelling this year with Covid restrictions keeping pubs closed until April. Even then it was only outdoor opening, and it wasn’t until 17th May that pubs were allowed to open inside. Even so, I managed to get to quite a few pubs I had not visited before. Most were very good and it really was quite hard selecting just five of the best. They are listed in chronological order of my visit, not by preference. Kirkstile Inn, Loweswater This pub had been on my must-visit list for a long time but despite several…