Wellingborough - Pt.1

The Northamptonshire town of Wellingborough is, for many, just one of several glimpsed at high speed on the train up-country from St Pancras. A sizeable town for sure, but the trajectory of the rail line which skirts its eastern edge means you see precious little of the busy market town centre, less still its pubs. It's always been something of an occasional visit for me, Kettering being closer, Bedford that bit bigger for a day out. But recent pub openings, including Hart Family Brewer brewpub The Old House, and a couple of very good micropubs, one of which is practically on the station platform, have made the stop a much more attractive proposition of late.

Of course another part of the attraction is that Wellingborough lies at the very heart of the Northamptonshire Table Skittles tradition, or it certainly should be! Whilst I've little doubt that almost every pub and club in the town would have had a skittles table at one time, sadly very few remain now, in fact I know of only one table at The Locomotive, a pub which has already featured on this blog. Which is not to say that Wellingborough has turned its back on pub games, far from it in fact.

The Wellingborough Pool League is well established in the town, as is league Darts with even the tiny Little R'Ale House micropub fielding a team. The other pub game played in Wellingborough is the slightly rarer 4-pin version of Bar Billiards, an example of which can be seen here in the lounge bar of the Ranelagh Arms.

The Ranelagh is a true backstreet locals pub, tidy and well-run, and an entirely new one to me, located as it is in an area that I'd never had call to pass through. In fact it's one of the closest traditional pubs to the rail station, and well worth the short diversion down Ranelagh Road off Midland Road from the station, if that's the way you arrive into the town centre.

It's a true hotbed of sport and games, from supporting local football and amateur boxing, to the traditional pub staples of Darts and Pool. Two teams play Bar Billiards at the pub in the Summer and Winter leagues of the Wellingborough & District Bar Billiards Association, a small but well-established league.

Venues for Bar Billiards in the town have come and gone over the years, the most recent loss being the Rising Sun which is now permanently closed. One of the beauties of Bar Billiards as a pub game is the limited space required to house a table, with play from just one end rather than the all-round cueing of Pool that usually requires a dedicated games area. So new venues have proved relatively easy to find, and the league has remained stable at eight teams playing from five pubs and clubs in and around the town.

One of the latest to introduce a table is the Old England II, sister pub of the Old England in Northampton, and part of a small chain of speciality ale and cider houses. The Old England II has fully embraced the game, with two teams now playing from the pub in the Wellingborough league. The pub is a fairly sizeable open-plan affair with plenty of room for this and Darts. The licensee is also looking out for a skittles table, which would be a great addition to the pub, and go some way to helping this most traditional of Northamptonshire games survive in the town.