Dog & Gun, Syston, Leicestershire

I occasionally like to re-visit a pub that's already featured on this blog. Usually with some trepidation it must be said, certainly as far as traditional pub games are concerned where subsequent developments are rarely positive. It's best not to leave these things too long though...

I prevaricated over an exploration of the skittle alley at the Coach & Horses, Markfield for several months before a refurb made the decision for me, the alley now a skittle alley-shaped dining area. It was a similar story with the Gate Hangs Well on the edge of Syston Village, a makeover spelling the end for this traditional Leicestershire skittle alley. Since then, Syston has been on my mind, and a return to the Dog & Gun something of a priority since the pub last featured on here over five years ago.

I'm delighted to say that the Dog & Gun remains a very fine multi-room pub, a backstreet boozer that feels more like a rural village local than its semi-urban setting might suggest. The pub is part of the small Steamin' Billy chain which has successfully revived many struggling pubs in the county, and features a traditional flag-stone floored bar, and a larger modernised lounge bar. There's also a games/function room, which was the principal reason for my visit, though a nice pint of Dark Mild from the local Belvoir Brewery was also a factor.

The image to the left shows how the games room appeared on my last visit, the Leicester Skittles Table showing signs of use, and with a complete set of the hardwood pins and cheeses which are unique to this local game. There was also a nice Jaques Devil Amongst The Tailors, the classic bar-room game. The Dartboard was set-up for league play at this time, the skittles table merely available for casual games and functions at the pub. Things have changed a little since then, though sadly not in a particularly positive way for games enthusiasts like myself.

The Devil Amongst The Tailors seems to have disappeared, though it may still be tucked away somewhere at the pub. More crucially, the Leicester Skittles Table, whilst in a similar play-worn condition, is now lacking two of the three Lignum Vitae cheeses essential to a proper game (and one of the pins has been replaced with a newer king-pin, more of a detail than a problem), though I was told the table rarely if ever gets used these days anyway. The Dartboard is wall-mounted now, though whether league play continues at the pub is hard to say. Sadly, the impressive games aspect of the pub appears to be withering on the vine.

It was an interesting and rewarding visit for me despite these less than positive developments. The skittles table, whilst showing signs of its undoubted age, is a lovely vintage model. Most of these Leicester tables that are still in use for league play have received at least one extensive refurbishment in recent years, essential maintenance to counteract the ravages of weekly competition. But this is usually done locally, and more often than not with brightly coloured vinyl and rubber replacing the original oxblood leather upholstery. The stitched and tacked leather remains on the table at the Dog & Gun (above), possibly padded with horsehair, and it really does make a difference to the overall look of the table if not its playability. As usual with the Leicester version of the game, I can find no indication of who originally made this table.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of my return visit was the sudden realisation that the 'games room' is in fact the pubs original Skittle Alley. Pretty obvious when you look at the photo of the whole room, it's a classic alley-shaped building for the local Leicestershire game of Long Alley Skittles, it just hadn't occurred to me until now. At one end is a bar counter, and at the other is the business end of the alley, all-but concealed behind folding doors and carpet. Un-lock and open the full-width doors though, and the trough and hanging 'curtain' at the back of the alley is revealed in all its slightly tatty, unused glory (above). There's even a couple of old pins lying in the trough gathering dust. A careful examination in front of this area reveals the nine steel seats which make up the frame, concealed but now poking through the carpet in several places (below).

So games appear to be in decline at the Dog & Gun, and I understand there was a plan to convert the alley into a Gin Bar at one time, maybe there still is. But as it stands, it's all still there. A skittle alley under a carpet, the skittles table just a sensitive refurbishment away from coming back into use. Both important elements of the Leicestershire pub games tradition, both just waiting for a revival of interest at the pub. A revival that if I'm honest, may never come, but it'll be worth a re-visit to find out if only for another pint of that Dark Mild.

Moon Inn, Mordiford, Herefordshire

I recently achieved a long-standing goal in visiting the Moon Inn, a classic half-timbered Herefordshire pub in the village of Mordiford. The village itself is fairly modest in size, but something of a magnet for walkers on the Mordiford Loop footpath. Modest it may be, but it punches well above its weight in the tight-knit world of 'traditional woven cereal figures', giving its name to the unique heart-shaped Mordiford Corn Dolly!

I was keen to visit the pub both for its fine reputation, and its location which is close enough to Hereford to be an important venue in the local Indoor Quoits league. Unfortunately, rural pubs in Herefordshire can be difficult to get to by public transport, which is a bit of a problem as I usually travel to Hereford by rail. An overnighter in Hereford town with my partner provided the opportunity, as well as the greatest gift a partner can bestow, the willing services of a designated driver. As with all things in life though, you should be careful what you wish for because whilst the pub was certainly as good as I'd hoped it would be, the visit brought with it a bit of sad news for pub games enthusiasts like myself, more of which later...

The Moon Inn is that rare thing, a popular destination pub with a great reputation for food and beer, yet remains very much a village local with a strong commitment to the community it serves, and of course traditional pub games. Local and highly distinctive pub games at that, and none more so than the card game Phat which is as popular in the Hereford area as Cribbage is in the Vale of Evesham. Phat isn't unique to Hereford, but it's certainly a game that most of us will probably never have heard of, least of all seen being played. In fact I've only ever come across Phat in Hereford where the game is played in practically all of the more traditional pubs and clubs in the town and surrounding villages. A 'Phat Friendly' pub can often be recognised by the presence of one of the unique green felt-topped boards shown below, or indeed a group of people actually playing Phat in the corner of the pub!

The game of Phat is a trick taking and points scoring game played by two pairs of players, and scored to 181, hence the larger 'cribbage' style scoring board seen here in the bar of the Moon Inn. The game remains popular at the pub with play on several weekdays, but the Hereford league is much reduced from its 70's/80's heyday when there were over 70 teams playing in 6 divisions in the area.

Local Phat enthusiast Albert Phipps and other players at the pub, recently hit the headlines for the very generous donation of their game winnings to the local St Michaels Hospice. The full article can be read here, and is a reminder, should it be needed, of the huge importance local pubs like the Moon Inn and their customers play in fund-raising for charitable causes like this.

Of course Darts is probably the most important game played at the pub. The trophy cabinet to the right of the dartboard holds a good collection of silverware for the Moonatics, the pubs highly successful Darts team which is currently throwing in division one of the Hereford Licensed Victuallers Darts League.

So something of a hotbed for pub games, but sadly it's not all good news for the traditions of games play at the Moon Inn, or indeed the wider Hereford area. When I last visited the area around a year ago, I received the bombshell news that the Mens section of the Hereford City Quoits League had finally folded. At that time the Ladies section was still going, though in as parlous a position as the struggling mens section had been. I now learn from the landlord of the Moon that the Ladies section has also ceased competition, bringing almost 70 years of continuous league Quoits play to an end in the Hereford area. This is very sad news indeed, particularly as the Hereford League was one of only half a dozen remaining in an area stretching from the Forest of Dean up to Shropshire along the Welsh Borders.

It's certainly a blow for the game, but it also represents yet another loss of the genuine local distinctiveness that makes the British pub at its best so special. Obviously the game will continue to be played in pubs that still have one of the heavy concrete boards and a set of rubber Quoits, indeed the landlord of the Moon Inn was setting-up ready for a game that evening between the pubs two Quoits teams. But league play of games like this is absolutely crucial for the survival of the tradition as a whole, as evidenced by the absence of Quoits in Evesham, an area that was until relatively recently an important centre of Indoor Quoits play. Indeed Indoor Quoits is often referred to as 'Evesham Quoits' and played to 'Evesham Rules', yet there are currently no Quoits pubs remaining in the Evesham area to my knowledge. When leagues fold, games just never seems to hold their position in the pub to the same degree, and it's hoped that in-house competition like the one at the Moon Inn will go some way toward preventing Quoits disappearing entirely from the Hereford area over the coming years.

The Moon Inn has been much extended in recent years to accommodate the all-important food trade that ensures village pubs like this survive and thrive, but the heart of the pub retains much of its traditional charm and character. The metal strips screwed to the parquet flooring (below) mark the throwing points for the Dartboard, and the former location of the Quoits Board in the bar, which originally sat between the door and bench seating to the left. Note there are two strips for the Quoits throw, the furthest being the standard for the mens league, the closer one for the Ladies throw. Quite why it was decided there should be a difference is probably lost in the mists of league history, the weight of the rubber quoits don't seem to offer too much in the way of difficulty for all but the most frail players, but then it seems the game has always been more popular with older players. The board is now located in a more convenient location in a side-room of the main bar area with a set of Quoits available for a game whenever you fancy one, which I hope you do, as often as possible.

The door to the cellar, located roadside from when the pub was a coaching inn.

Bulls Head, Whetstone, Leicestershire

Of all the really good, and occasionally really great pubs I've visited over the years, there's often been a single crucial factor that goes a long way to explaining their particular appeal. Not heritage, though that's clearly a bonus at times. Not the number of hand pumps on the bar, which is of course the 'only' measure that some folk use to judge a pub. No, for me it's the less obvious, but fundamental issue of how long the licensee(s) have been at the pub. Long tenure at a community local was once the norm, it's now very much the exception, and it's this increasingly rare aspect of the pub trade that often determines whether a pub is merely 'decent', or whether it delivers something really special for its locals and visitors alike.

The seemingly endless 'churn' of licensees in the pub trade is so normal now as to seem hardly worthy of comment, but I believe this is one of the major factors in the overall decline of pubs. This constant instability, which usually brings with it regular and often highly inappropriate refurbishment, change for change sake, is anything but attractive to locals. Yes, pub-goers have always enjoyed the novelty of the new, but novelty quickly wears thin. It's a fact that for a pub to be regarded as your local, somewhere you care about and are happy to buy into on a regular basis, there has to be some measure of stability in the faces behind the bar and the direction that the business is moving in.

Which is not to say that a new business can't deliver an instant wow-factor that's highly attractive to customers, particularly with regard to beer range or a great food offering. But what I'm talking about here is that indefinable 'rightness' that you get in a well-established community pub, and in a business where licensees come and go at a truly bewildering rate, I think this goes a long way to explaining why so many pubs struggle to be truly 'great' at what they do, and why it's such a pleasure when you 'do' find one that has that indefinable 'rightness'.

Which brings me to the Bulls Head, a thriving village local on the very edge of Leicester's southern urban sprawl. I used to drink quite regularly in Whetstone some 20 or so years ago, which was an easy half-hour walk from home in nearby Littlethorpe. At that time, of the five pubs in the village we tended to favour the Wheatsheaf, a low-beamed, sticky-carpeted, horribly smokey locals pub with a consistently excellent pint of Ansells Mild, a beer I miss the taste of to this day. The nearby Bulls Head just never figured for some reason. Perhaps it was just a little too much of a locals pub back then, perhaps it was simply that we could get our Everards beer fix at our own great local The Plough. I'm glad we chose the Wheatsheaf though, because sadly the pub is no longer there! Bulldozed quite recently for a small housing development in a village not exactly short of housing...

Many of the locals from the Wheatsheaf have moved their trade to the Bulls Head, a pub which has been in the same safe hands for over a dozen years now. Now this may not sound a particularly long time in the grand scheme of things, but the fact is it's a significant period in the current topsy-turvy market, and certainly represents a firm commitment to the business that's been recognised by pub owners Everards on more than one occasion. Licensee Jayne Irwin and her team run a tight ship at the Bull, but always with an eye to what her loyal locals actually want from 'their' pub, which I think is how it should be.

The pub itself is a fairly substantial red brick and mock Tudor affair, sitting on a large plot that includes a well-used garden. It retains a traditional two-room layout of bar and lounge, the latter the quiet space, the former equipped with Pool Table, Dartboard, and when I popped in, the current afternoon bar-fly obsession of Snooker on the telly. The pub dog was lazing on a big floor cushion, and there was a smattering of locals in for a pint even on a slow midweek afternoon when so many pubs don't even bother to open these days. The pub supports numerous games teams, including those for Darts and Pool, and I think Dominoes is still played at the pub if the silverware in the trophy cabinet is anything to go by. There's also skittles of course, Whetstone being at the very heart of Leicestershire's Long Alley and Table Skittles tradition.

The Skittle Alley is in a separate building at the rear of the pub, possibly re-purposed many years ago as it has something of the look of a former garage with at least one set of double doors along the length of the brick building. This space is available for functions as well as skittles play, though the pub don't currently field a team in the local Long Alley league.

Instead, league skittles play is represented at the pub in the Dunton Basset Ladies and Mens Leagues, as well as a couple of mixed teams in the smaller Lutterworth League. That makes for a lot of skittles play, and the Bulls Head is clearly one of those pubs that derive a great deal of trade from its support of traditional pub games.

While I was there rooting around and taking photos in the alley, a local popped his head round the door to see what I was up to and a bit of a chat. He'd spent the morning sprucing up and cleaning the alley ahead of a function, and I could tell the place was his pride and joy. He was also effusive in his praise of Jayne who is clearly the beating heart of one of the finest and well-run community locals I've had the pleasure to visit in a good while.

The skittles table is a local Leicester model, and in common with all similar examples I've seen in the area, there's no indication of who made it. As far as I can tell, the table is used exclusively for the 'county' version of the game with its distinctive yellow plastic pins and cheeses, rather than the thin wooden skittles used in the unique 'city' game and which this style of table was probably originally designed for.

The tables shown here are unusual. I've seen plenty of games tables with alcoves for a pint, but not this steel frame design. Sadly, they're on their way out in favour of new furniture, all part of the day-to-day upkeep of the alley and the pub in general.

Swan Inn, Studley, Warwickshire

For such a modestly proportioned rural village, Studley (pronounced stud-lee, and not stude-lee as I mistakenly said to the bus driver!) has an awful lot going for it. On an unseasonally hot early Spring afternoon recently, a wander around the village revealed a newish speciality beer and cider off licence, a terrific little brewery tap, a former Mad O'Rourke's 'Little' pub (ask your parents), and that rarest of rare things, a very nice pint of Guinness in a pub that has one of the last remaining Skittle Alleys in the area.

I could have visited several more pubs in the immediate vicinity, had a Crusty Cob from the Butcher's Wife's Kitchen (regrets, I have a few...), and if staying over for the night, finished things off with something spicy and Himalayan from the local Nepalese Restaurant. As it was I caught the bus back to nearby Alcester for the night, a pretty decent village itself, though no pubs with skittle alleys as far as I can tell...

Of course the main reason I'd hopped on a bus to Studley was to visit the Swan Inn and its aforementioned skittle alley. This part of the Midlands is at the very edge of a skittles tradition which extends across to Wales and down through the whole of the West Country, but the closer you get to the urban sprawl of Birmingham, the harder it is to find pubs with any kind of skittles play.

Darts and Pool are alive and well in the area, as is that most traditional of all pub games, Cribbage. In fact I've seen more afternoon games of Cribbage in progress in this part of the country than anywhere else I can think of. But it doesn't take a lot of digging to find that Skittles was just as popular at one time, with alleys dotted throughout the West Midlands, including much of what now constitutes the wider metropolitan area of Birmingham. Of these, only a handful remain in Birmingham itself, including one that's already featured on this blog at the Selly Park Tavern. It would seem that modern day Birmingham is just too cosmopolitan for the humble game of skittles, but not so Studley.

The skittle alley at the Swan may be one of the last in the area, but it's not for want of patronage. It helps that the actual alley is just a small part of a good-size function room at the pub. Well-appointed and with its own bar, and of course it comes with the option of a friendly game of skittles.

The main reason the alley is in such regular use, is that in common with some club leagues such as the one in Coventry, the Swan is home to its own league of ten teams who play 'home' and 'away' at the pub. There also seems to be some overlap with play in the nearby Redditch League which means there's league play at the Swan Inn most weekday evenings. This represents important regular custom for a pub like the Swan which majors on the more traditional aspects of the trade like pub games and televised sport.