Sir Charles Napier, Leicester

A little off the beaten track as it is, I'd recommend making the effort to visit the Sir Charles Napier. The pub is a classic inter-war years community local, recently refurbished, but still retaining three separate rooms including a cosy wood panelled lounge, and more functional games oriented bar. The interior is considered of sufficient merit to be included on CAMRA's inventory of Real Heritage Pubs, and more information on this and many other unspoilt classics can be found on the excellent searchable website: www.heritagepubs.org.uk.

Traditional, and some not so traditional games play an important role at the pub. League Dominoes, Darts, and Table Skittles are all popular, and compete for space with the more recent additions of Poker and Quiz nights.

The Skittles Table at the Sir Charles Napier is the somewhat rarer Leicester version, distinctly different to the more common Northamptonshire tables found in the south of the county. The pins and cheeses are the slender hardwood variety unique to the Leicester game, as opposed to the more chunky Boxwood or plastic used elsewhere. This makes for a very different game, one where the higher scoring 'Tips' (Whackups in Leicester) and 'Floorers' (Nine-a-Ball) of the Northants game are much harder to achieve.

The table is turned round and 'parked' in an alcove when not in use. It's a very smart and well maintained table, and the team presumably want it to stay that way. Skittles night is on Wednesday, with play in the South Leicestershire League which covers quite a wide geographical area including Earl Shilton, Syston, and Wigston.

Darts, Dominoes, and Skittles trophies jostle for position in the trophy cabinet.

2019 Update

I recently had the opportunity to revisit the Napier and take a few more photos with the kind permission of the licensee, including a few of the unspoilt and attractive front lounge bar that was just a little too busy to photograph on my last visit. Whilst the pub seems to have had a lick of paint in places since I was last there, it could probably do with a sensitive makeover now with some of the upholstery looking a bit threadbare in places. Nevertheless, it's still well worth the walk out from town, and I found the handful of early-doors locals chatty and welcoming in the more basic public bar. It's not entirely obvious from the Lounge Bar, but two or three real ales are usually available.

Whilst Darts and Dominoes are still played at the Napier, sadly the Skittles team have moved on taking the original table with them. There's still a decent old Leicester Skittles Table in the bar (below), but with an incomplete set of pins it's unclear how much use it gets these days. With the nearby Tudor closed, future uncertain, the traditional Leicester game appears to be struggling in this part of the town.

2024 Update

This latest update on the Sir Charles Napier is likely to be the last on here given recent changes at the pub. I hadn't been to the pub for some time after the previous post in 2019 so it was sad, if perhaps not surprising, to hear that the pub had closed in 2023. As documented by one of the Napier's locals that has also followed this blog post, the pub reopened not long after, but this was a short-lived reprieve as it closed again just a few months later, the feeling being that this may be the end for the pub. But the good news is that the Napier is now back open again following an extensive refurbishment which has re-badged the pub as a Craft Union house, and if we're absolutely honest the pub is now in better shape to succeed than it's been for several years.

When fellow pub blogger Britain Beermat posted the comment reproduced above, few would have disagreed with him given the turmoil in the pub trade at that time. It now seems somewhat prophetic given the timescale, because whilst the pub is still very much the community local it's always been, and has even managed to retain cask beer in the form of Fullers London Pride, much that was of interest to the pub heritage and/or pub games enthusiast has been sacrificed to what we might regard as necessary change. The kind of change that will hopefully ensure the pub survives, maybe even thrive for the foreseeable future.

Thankfully the original three room layout survives, rare enough when so many similar pubs have been knocked through to give a single large space around a central servery. I note too that the original corner entrance is back in use, this leads into a vestibule with a choice of the Public Bar to the left, or (what was) the smaller Lounge Bar to the right with onward travel to the Function/Concert Room that now also serves as a large and comfortable Lounge. The Bar is little changed in truth, though sadly the Leicester Skittles Table that was of particular interest to this blog is long gone. In fact I doubt whether it survived the original closure given that it was little used in the end. So yet another on the list of former Skittles pubs in this part of Leicester, including the nearby Crows Nest, still open but without its two Skittles Tables, and the long closed Tudor. The single Dartboard in the bar has been expanded to an impressive 'floodlit' twin Oche, and other than a lick of paint, new lighting, and some of the older signage removed, the bar remains much the same as it was, that is to say the social hub of the pub, and busy enough with locals when I popped in for a pint on a midweek afternoon recently.

It's the Lounge Bar (above) that's perhaps the biggest loss to us non-locals though. All the fixtures and fittings that qualified this room as a Heritage asset, largely unchanged since the 60's, have been removed. The removal of the curved bar servery and fireplace in particular have changed the whole look and purpose of the room from what was originally an old-fangled Snug to its current use as the pubs Pool Room.

Of course the difficulty with assessing a pub like the Napier is the baggage that we ourselves bring to it. The dynamic of the pub with its basic Public Bar, traditional games, and the more 'cosy' Lounge Bar which was popular with older customers, was something that made the pub special for me. Yet there's no denying the place needed to change to survive, and it's also true that if this latest visit to the Napier had been my first, I'd undoubtedly have judged it a great multi-room locals pub, a largely traditional suburban survivor that will hopefully remain an asset to its local community for many years to come.