Wellingborough - Pt.2

The Little R'Ale House

I've noticed a welcome, and frankly long-overdue revival of station taps and railway pubs of late. By which I mean pubs that were built to service the needs of travellers when rail not road was the principle mode of transport for just about everyone and everything.

All but the tiniest rural Halts and modern-day Parkways came with an accompanying pub, inn, or licensed hotel. Sometimes just a humble boozer built to refresh and accommodate the men who constructed and worked on the rail network, but also many that were purpose built for passengers, and with all the facilities and grandeur of a mainline station. Even after the massive contraction of the rail network in the 60's, practically every town and many of the larger villages still had an open railway pub, often surviving long after the associated station had closed.

Of those that are still associated with a working station, it's perhaps puzzling that so many had fallen so far from grace toward the end of the 20th century. Despite the fact that many of these station pubs continue to occupy a favoured position, with a steady stream of custom literally walking past the front door for much of the day, it became something of a rule of thumb for me that the pub closest to the rail station would invariably be one of the very worst in town! Run-down, slightly dodgy of clientele, and certainly not the best beer on offer. Quite why the pub and brewing sector so comprehensively neglected this part of their estate, pubs that we might regard as a banker for steady trade, remains something of a mystery to me. Complacency is probably the answer.

How things have changed though. Starting with the revival of a handful of historic Refreshment Rooms in the north of England, and more recently taken up by a few of the more enterprising small and regional brewers, the Station Hotel in Hucknall being a good example. Some of the latest entrants to the station pub market are micropubs, refreshment rooms in the old sense given that most are truly micro in size and therefore limited by necessity to offering just good beer and cider, and perhaps a few snacks.

The Little R'Ale House micropub couldn't be any more of a railway pub if it tried. Located adjacent to platform 1 of Wellingborough Station, it makes an ideal waiting room for northbound services on the Midland Mainline, which is how I tend to make use of its cosy single bar-room. Housed in what was once an ammunition store, it's a beerhouse specialising in locally brewed ales served direct from the barrel.

The principal custom of The Little R'Ale House is, perhaps unsurprisingly, travellers on the busy route to and from London St Pancras, including a loyal band of commuters who pop in at the end of the day for a pint and a natter. What's perhaps more surprising given its location out of town is that the pub also has a loyal band of Wellingborough locals, even to the point of including a team in the local Darts League.

If there's one thing you generally won't see in a micropub, it's a Dartboard (or a skittle alley for that matter!), the diminutive nature of this category of boozer usually making a Darts throw impractical. It's to the credit of the owners that they've found room in their little pub not only for a Dartboard, but a whole range of other pub games. Dominoes, Cards and Cribbage Boards are available, Shut The Box, a Pin Bagatelle, and most impressive of all, a mighty Sjoelbak Table. The photo above shows this sizeable game in its usual position in a corner of the room, but when the weather permits, it can be found in use in the small beer garden at the front of the pub. That's right! The Little R'Ale House even has an (appropriately micro) beer garden for the Summer months.

The Queens Head

I must have driven past The Queens Head literally dozens of times over the last few years without ever feeling the need to pop in. Not that it didn't appeal to me, more that the short walk out on the 'wrong' side of town (the opposite side to the rail station) meant I never quite got to it. The opening of the nearby Little Ale House micropub has changed all that, and I'm now a regular visitor to the 'wrong' side of town for it's diminutive charms and great local beer. It was a conversation in the aforementioned Little R'Ale House that finally spurred me to cross the road and try the Queens Head out for size. Apparently the pub had recently taken delivery of a Bar Billiards table...

My first visit to the Queens Head was on a typically slow weekday afternoon, which is the perfect time to get to know a pub without the distraction of a crowd of locals. I must say, I felt slightly embarrassed that it had taken me this long to visit the pub, as traditional community locals go it's comfortably one of the best in town, even the beer range is better than most. I think I'd always imagined the pub as a modernised, opened out single-room affair, but this couldn't be further from the truth. In fact I doubt there's another pub in Wellingborough with such a rambling multi-room interior. The main bar area is carpeted and built for comfort, a more basic public bar area is where the Bar Billiards Table can be found, and there's an adjoining area for the pubs well-used Dartboard and televised sport, as well as a separate Pool Room to the rear of the pub.

The Wellingborough & District Bar Billiards League remains reassuringly static at around eight teams playing on five tables in the town, but in common with most pub games leagues, venues have come and gone over the years. The latest to fall by the wayside is the Rising Sun, a pub I'd singularly failed to gain access to on a couple of occasions recently, and which I now know I'll never achieve given that the pub has closed for good. A great shame as it was one of the last in the town centre with a Northamptonshire Skittles Table. It's the Bar Billiards table from the Rising Sun that now resides in the bar of the Queens Head.