The Black Horse - Foxton, Leicestershire

On the increasingly rare occasions that I come across a Northamptonshire Skittles Table in a pub that I wasn’t previously aware of, it gives me hope that the game will not in fact entirely disappear in my lifetime. Talk to anyone involved in the game however, and the story remains pretty bleak. The area around North Northamptonshire, South Leicestershire and to a much lesser extent Rutland, was a true hotbed of the game when I moved to the area some 25 years ago. Perhaps half of all rural village pubs had a Skittles Table, and almost every club had at least one table. The major towns of the area, Market Harborough and Kettering, gave their names to active leagues of multiple divisions, and boasted several pubs and clubs where the game thrived, or perhaps in some cases merely survived.

My understanding is that there are now just two Skittles venues in Market Harborough, with only the Conservative Club actually participating in league play. Kettering town centre has a very well-used table at the Alexandra Arms, and perhaps another three or four in estate pubs and clubs further afield, well down on previous figures of perhaps more than a dozen. The situation in rural areas is very much worse of course. Where pubs have managed to escape closure, it's often at the expense of space for games of any kind, dining being the only realistic route to survival. All is not lost though...

The Domino in Corby has a good table now, and a Ladies team playing in the Islip League, probably the first time that Table Skittles has been played in the town's environs for decades. I also have to remind myself that these substantial, craftsman built Skittles Tables are rarely lost to the skip. When a pub closes or a table is deemed surplus to requirements, it's often rescued by the locals and removed to the safety of a garage or village hall. Perhaps awaiting the day when there's a resurgence in popularity of the game, as there most surely will be. Even now these tables occasionally reappear unexpectedly in pubs, as is the case at The Domino in Corby.

I caught sight of a venerable old Skittles Table earlier this week, and in a pub I wouldn't have expected to find the game. It was at the end of a muddy Winter canal walk from Union Wharf in Market Harborough to Foxton, a village best known for it's proximity to an impressive Lock Flight and historic Inclined Plane on the Grand Union Canal. A hugely popular destination for tourists and dog walkers, but I wasn't there for the Locks, I was aiming for a pub, the equally historic Black Horse.

The Black Horse sits at the top of the village, a stones-throw from the ancient village Church and conveniently close to a wide and well-tended footpath down to the Locks (which itself has two pubs). I hadn't been to this pub for at least 30 years, back when it was a well regarded Marston's Brewery pub. Of the two pubs in the village back then it this and the nearby Bell at Gumley that were our preferred choice. Today it was also my preference given that it's and all-day opener, a rare thing for a village pub these days, and its neighbour the Shoulder of Mutton wouldn't be open until late afternoon.

It's a nicely refurbished pub, recently under new management. The separate bar is the kind of space you could happily spend a few hours of an afternoon, and there are bar games on the windowsills like Shut The Box, Cards and Dominoes to accompany the beer. Smart but not overdone, unlike so many pub interiors now, the Black Horse still feels like an old pub and I liked it a lot.

It was on the way to the entrance that something caught my eye. Whilst the bar still has its Dartboard, across from the main body of the pub is a separate Games Room. If the Skittles Table hadn't been setup in line with the open doorway I guess I'd never have investigated, but there it was, a vintage Northamptonshire (or Leicestershire) Skittles Table, sharing space with the Pool Table.

Whilst it's always a pleasure to see a Skittles Table in a village pub, it's even better if the owner happens to be on hand for a bit of a chat. Turns out this table was rescued from the old Trades & Labour Club in Market Harborough, now long gone but I've been led to believe by those who played there that this is one of several tables the club had during the game's heyday.

Chatting with the owner of this table was like a roll-call of lost pubs, clubs and venues for the game though. He played for a team at the long-closed Horse & Trumpet in Medbourne, a former Phipps (NBC) house, thatched, Grade II listed, and a bit of a timewarp pub that many in the area remember with great fondness. Clearly a keen enthusiast of the game, I guess he'd been waiting for a chance to set this table up somewhere appropriate, somewhere it would be appreciated. Table Skittles is a noisy game of course, not suitable for dining pubs, and often difficult to accommodate even when there's a public bar, so a separate Games Room like this, not hidden away but open to all-comers, is an ideal location for the game.

The really good news though is that the pub has now got a team up for the local Kibworth League, playing for fun and clearly learning the ropes, but that will hopefully change in time. Skittles is an addictive pastime just ripe for a dose of nostalgia to bring it back into favour.

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.

White Hart, South Kilworth, Leicestershire

The road from Market Harborough to Lutterworth winds its way through five attractive south Leicestershire villages. Under its original designation as the A427 it was quite a busy route onwards to Coventry, but is now largely bypassed by the A14 and hence a minor A-road these days. As recently as the early 90's there were eight pubs dotted along its length, some of which were very popular destinations indeed. Driving the route in recent years it had come as something of a shock to me that this figure had fallen to just two open pubs, such has been the impact of diverted traffic, and of course the more general decline in pub-going.

The Coach & Horses in Lubbenham and The Bell at Husbands Bosworth were for a time the only pubs still offering refreshment to villagers and travellers, following the permanent closure of four of these eight pubs, and what would prove to be the temporary closure of two more. The good news today is that the White Lion at South Kilworth has reopened, albeit as a wine bar/restaurant, and the Black Horse at Walcote is due to open again shortly in the safe hands of community ownership. The latter is keenly anticipated by both villagers and visitors alike, the Black Horse having had a great reputation for its beer and Thai food back in the day.

Thankfully for those travellers with a thirst and a desire to explore the lesser known byways of rural Leicestershire, there have always been a number of good village pubs located just off the main drag, some of which have already featured on this blog. The White Hart at South Kilworth is one example, a village local just south of the main road and well worth the short detour. It's also one of only a handful of village pubs in this part of the county that opens at lunchtime with any degree of regularity (though not on Wednesdays).

I visited the White Hart on one of those bright winter lunchtimes just made for walking across fields and exploring village churchyards (the pub lies opposite the parish church of St Nicholas'). The fire was lit, and the Sunday lunchtime locals were just starting to drift in, all the talk on the weekends international rugby. Warm, welcoming, exactly the kind of pub that generations of locals, and a fair few travellers have been retreating to on a cold winter days like this for years. It's a pub I hardly knew about if I'm honest, but one that I've added to my list of occasional visits when in the area.

This area of south Leicestershire is one of the hotbeds of Leicestershire Table Skittles play. At least four of the pubs on the main road from Lutterworth to Market Harborough were equipped with a skittles table (only the Coach & Horses at Lubbenham has one now), indeed I recall playing a game at the White Horse in the days when it was a traditional and popular Marston's pub. Most of the village pubs hereabouts have a table, and I believe all of these compete in one or more of the local leagues. There's even a chance that the community running the Black Horse could reinstate a table to the village of Walcote, the Tavern Inn being the home of skittles in the village until its recent , and untimely closure and conversion to housing.

The White Hart's skittles table sits at the far end of the pubs games area along with the Dartboard and Pool Table. It's a W T Black & Son table, the turned wooden legs marking it out as an earlier model than most. The pins and cheeses are yellow plastic, which is the standard for play in many of the Leicestershire and Warwickshire leagues. The White Hart fields teams in the Dunton Bassett Skittles League, as well as a team in the Ladies League, with play on Monday and Wednesday evenings.

Trophies for Pool and Skittles are displayed next to the wood-burning stove. Keen-eyed gamers will also notice the Ruddles Brewery branded Shove Ha'penny at the back.

General Elliott, Willoughby Waterleys, Leicestershire

I would guess that most people remember the occasion of their first pint in a pub. Often underage, probably buoyed by the company of friends, and something of a right of passage for many. For me it was a case of 'in at the deep end', a true novice amongst experienced drinkers, and a tentative introduction to what was then an alien and unfamiliar adult world.

As a boy, my only direct experience of the pub was on errands for cigarettes and chocolate, peering through the 'Off Sales' hatch of what would eventually become my local, the Black Horse in Aylestone. From there you could see the blokes propping up the bar, smoking, chatting, sinking pints. Couldn't miss the fug of stale beer and tobacco smoke. A strange and frankly uninviting environment it must be said.

I don't recall ever being taken inside a pub as a youngster, so when I started work as an apprentice at the tender age of 15, the regular work-time 'liquid lunches' in the company of adults were a new experience for me. I guess that's why that very first occasion, a long lunchtime boozing session with the men, the 3.5 tonner parked discreetly round the corner, sticks in my mind so clearly.

The General Elliott was the pub, Draught Bass the beer, and the tiny snug to the right of the front door the venue for two or three hours of solid afternoon drinking. A risky, dangerous, and quite probably sackable offence, and yet a common and regular occurrence at the time. Needless to say, I look back on those days with a mixture of horror (there was no designated driver!), and huge affection for what was probably a golden era of pub-going, the like of which we will undoubtedly never see again.

I recall visiting the General Elliott several years later as part of some cycling adventure or other. I can't remember whether the little snug still existed then, but apparently it's been gone for a good while. The pub now consists of a single L-shaped room. A snug-like area remains to the right of the entrance where the original separate room once was, the pubs traditional Skittles Table and Dart Board located at the other end. Though it's certainly changed a fair bit since my first visit, the General Elliot is still very much a traditional village local, and revitalised in the hands of enthusiastic new licensees when I visited in the summer.

A typically short entry in CAMRA's 1979 guide to Real Ale in Leicestershire & Rutland confirms the two room layout, as well as the existence of Table Skittles. The Northampton made W T Black & Son skittles table is probably in much the same location as it was back then, though whether the legs had been modified with a set of wheels as it is now, I couldn't say. It definitely didn't live in the smaller snug, and we didn't play a game back then in the early 80's.

The General Elliott currently fields two teams in the Dunton Bassett Skittles League, and a more general Games Night is held on Tuesdays.

In recent years the pub had kept somewhat limited 'rural' opening hours, but weekday lunchtime opening has now been restored by the current licensees, and an improved beer range to match. I'm pleased to say that the Draught Bass is still popular with the locals, and this lovely traditional village pub is a great destination for food, drink, maybe even a game of skittles.

Bulls Head, Cosby, Leicestershire

The south Leicestershire village of Cosby was little more than half an hours walk for me when I lived in nearby Littlethorpe. At that time there were three decent pubs in the village centre, the Blacksmiths Arms, Huntsman, and Bulls Head, and I made the walk to Cosby quite often as a result. Today the village is down to just one pub and the Working Mens Club.

Despite strong opposition from locals and villagers the Huntsman is now a Co-op store, and the Blacksmiths has been an Indian restaurant for several years now. The one remaining pub in the village, the Bulls Head, is an Everards Brewery house, and thankfully for those locals still interested in such things, a very good one at that.

Everards continue to support pubs like the Bulls Head where others (such as serial pub-closers Marston's, the previous owners of the Huntsman) show little or no such commitment. They also have a good track record when it comes to maintaining their pub estate, and even if the current 'vintage' makeovers, which are being rolled-out across the estate, might not be to everyone's taste (it works very well at the Bulls Head), their pubs remain attractive and inviting as a result.

Just as importantly in the context of this blog, Everards are also custodians of more traditional Skittle Alleys in the Leicestershire area than any other brewer or pubco. This part of South Leicestershire, close as it is to Everards Castle Acres brewery site, is one of the hotbeds of Long Alley Skittles play, with Everards pubs in Broughton Astley, Croft, Enderby, Huncote, Littlethorpe, and Whetstone all boasting good indoor skittle alleys.

The alley at the Bulls Head would probably have been a separate building at one time, though now accessed directly from a central corridor of the pub. I think this is why the throwing end of this, and other similar alleys, are laid with deep transverse lines around the foot hole or 'Mott' (below). Winter journeys from bar to skittle alley meant that players shoes would often be wet, and these grooves would have provided a non-slip surface as players launched themselves down the alley.

A modern conservatory at the rear of the pub houses the Skittles Table, set here with plastic 'Northamptonshire' style pins, but this is actually a Leicester Skittles Table. The Leicester variant of the game is very similar to the more common 'Northants' version, but uses thinner pins shaped like miniature Long Alley skittles. The cheeses are proportionately smaller and usually made from a very dense hardwood such as Laburnum or Lignum Vitae, though I've also seen plastic examples.

Tables like this are the norm in  and around Leicester city, but can also be found in an area broadly defined as South-West Leicestershire, as well as the Soar Valley area of North Leicestershire. This seems to coincide with those areas which have the strongest remaining Long Alley tradition, perhaps suggesting that this version arose as a Winter alternative to the alley game, somewhat independent of the similar Northamptonshire game.

To complete the picture of this excellent village local, Darts is very popular, as evidenced by the number of trophies littering the bar, including the impressive Ladies Knockout Cup shown below. The Bulls Head was also an early-adopter of the food franchise concept, with the popular Winley's Chinese Restaurant operating successfully from a separate room at the pub.

South Wigston, Leicestershire

The very centre of South Wigston is not a happy hunting ground for pubs. The closure of classic Victorian backstreet boozer the Grand Hotel, and more recently the Marquis of Queensbury, has left the immediate area around the rail station and shops unusually pub-free. The two social clubs will have mopped up much of the displaced custom, but the centre of the village has clearly ceased to be a destination for South Wigston drinkers.

It's in the surrounding residential areas that pub life continues unabated, particularly on the fringes bordering Wigston Magna where the two pubs featured here are found.

Nautical William

Throughout the 80's and 90's I would have driven past the Nautical William on many occasions, yet never felt inclined to pop in for a pint. At a time when 'locals' pubs like this were as common as 'local' supermarkets are today, it would have been just one more unremarkable boozer amongst many. It was also a far-flung outpost of Nottingham's Home Ales empire, offering the classic post-war beer range of Mild, Bitter, or an exotic 'mix' of Mild and Bitter. Even then, there was better available elsewhere!

The pub itself is a fairly typical 1950's building, of a type which I wouldn't have given a second glance at the time. Neither quaint nor 'historic' in the way some town and country pubs are, it's perhaps only because the pub sits on such a large plot that it stands out from the surrounding housing at all. But my view on pubs like this has changed over the years. To these eyes, pubs like the Nautical William are infinitely preferable to the new-build family dining venues which are replacing them, or the historic country pubs which promise much from the outside but have been stripped of all heritage and character within.

There's an honesty to these post-war community locals which makes them far closer to what I consider a proper pub to be than the glorified coffee houses and restaurants that so many have become of late. But it's exactly these kind of pubs, often standing on large attractive plots, that are being lost to housing and supermarket development at an alarming rate. This makes them all the more precious to pub enthusiasts like myself when they do survive largely intact and unspoilt, as is the case here.

Smartly refurbished in 2012, the Nautical William is now in private ownership, and still maintains its original multi-room layout. An entrance hall, which retains a now unused serving hatch (probably for off-sales originally, but possibly for corridor drinking), leads to a front dining room on the left, and smart public bar to the right (above). The games room to the rear of the pub is still well-used, and even the beer range has improved under the current owners.

Table Skittles, Darts and Pool are the mainstays of game play at the Nautical William, with skittles being played in division four of the Dunton Bassett Skittles League at the time I visited. There was also a skittle alley for the local game of Long Alley at one time, constructed by enthusiastic locals and opened in 1970. Whether this was in fact the current games room, which is about the right length for an alley, or another demolished building in the beer garden is not clear.

The skittles table is a W T Black & Son model. Most 'Blacks' tables are easily identifiable by the small oval plates on the front legs (though often broken or missing from the impact of a wayward 'cheese'), but they also carry information on construction stencilled on the woodwork underneath (below). This is table number 39, constructed in 1952 which is just two years before the Nautical William opened. Was this table bought from stock for the newly opened pub? If so it's quite possible that the skittles table is the only fixture at the pub contemporary with its original opening in the 50's.

Note also that this table was refurbished in 2013 by Colin Swinfen of Lutterworth, one of the few local craftsman skilled in the wood and leather work required for this job.

Chartwell Arms

I remember when the Chartwell Arms first opened its doors in the late 80's, a relatively rare occurrence even before the widespread closures of recent years. Known then as the Forryans Inn, the Chartwell is located on the edge of an industrial area, though it's essentially a residential estate pub. Bank's Brewery seemed to be one of the few who were actively building new pubs in those days, and a location like this would have suited their mixed food and drink offering, particularly back then when a lunchtime visit to the pub wasn't frowned on by employers in the way it is now.

The pub was given a fairly traditional layout which it retains to this day, with a lounge/eatery, bar area, and tile-floored games room which features Darts, Pool, and a slightly neglected Skittles Table tucked away in the corner. As can be seen in the advert for the opening (reproduced by kind permission of Midlands Vehicle Photographer), these were installed from opening, in stark contrast to newly opened pubs today, which rarely feature anything as social as a Darts Board, never mind the local game of skittles!

'Popular licensees Philip and Susan Hayes' are of course long gone from the Chartwell, and the current licensee is keen to establish games teams back at the pub following several years of instability behind the bar.

Three Hinckley Pubs

The entries for Hinckley in my 1979 copy of CAMRA's Real Ale Guide to Leicestershire & Rutland give a clear indication of the stranglehold Burton brewers had on the towns many pubs. Most were owned by Marston's, with the mighty Bass conglomerate providing the only other choice in town. The later 80's edition of the guide reads much the same, and I recall with some fondness the (relative) excitement of finding a pint of M&B Mild at the now closed Castle Tavern when the Leicester CAMRA branch were in town.

Hinckley now has its own CAMRA branch, and thankfully things have moved on a bit since then pub-wise. Which is not to say there isn't still plenty of Marstons beer about the town (Bass now seems to have become a rarity), with the lower strength Marston's Bitter still a good drink in my view. The national Wetherspoon chain helped break the mould, and since then there has been a slight, but welcome relaxation of the Burton monopoly in the town.

The former Skittle Alley at the Railway Inn

The Railway Inn (above) has certainly benefited from this recent relaxation, and is now in the hands of the excellent Steamin' Billy Brewery Co. The Railway was a popular Marston's house in its day, but had fallen on hard times despite the obvious catchment of rail passengers from the station across the road. This decline in 'railway pubs' and 'station hotels' seems to be a feature of many towns, the pub closest to the station so often a terrible disappointment to travellers where it could, and certainly should be one of the best. Quite why this might be is a mystery to me, but in the right hands many of these unofficial station buffets have been very successfully revived by forward thinking owners, and such is the case with the Railway Inn.

If I'm honest, the decor of the Railway's lounge bar doesn't appeal to me, but the bar is a real delight, and it's great that the multi-room layout has been retained and even expanded under the current owners. The bar manages to achieve a thoroughly traditional feel whilst being light and airy, bright and inviting to all. It makes waiting for a train a real pleasure, which is exactly what a station pub should do. The bar features a Darts Board, and there are regular Poker Nights on Sunday. Sadly the skittle alley, possibly the last of its kind in Hinckley town, has now been converted to dining.

The wider Hinckley area has a number of pubs which are listed by CAMRA as having important heritage interiors. This includes two in the town itself, one of which is the excellent Greyhound (above & below), located at the top end of the town.

The Greyhound has always been a treat for lovers of good pubs, retaining its traditional multi-room layout of three rooms radiating from a central servery. But like the Railway, the Greyhound had been allowed to whither on the vine by owners Marston's. Quite why Marston's are still in the pub trade is beyond me, they seem to have little idea or interest in the future of their ever-shrinking pub estate. Thankfully, there are still a few in the licensed trade who take a keen interest in our pub heritage and the unique culture which surrounds it. People like local pub hero Louise Lavender who now runs the Greyhound free of Marston's disinterest and neglect, and has set about revitalising the pub as a true asset for Hinckley drinkers.

It's a quiet oasis from the busy high street, a pub for conversation or quiet contemplation over a pint and the newspapers. The front bar area has a Darts Board, but sadly the skittles are long gone from the Greyhound.

A short walk out of town brings you to the Holywell, a pleasant enough 1920's Marston's pub, but one which is currently 'between licensees' so perhaps not at its best. A large, busy, one-room pub with all the usual pub game staples, including Darts and Pool, and the relative rarity of a traditional Skittles Table.

The pub was until recently a stalwart of local league skittles play, but currently finds itself without a home team. The Skittles Table is available for casual play, but usually resides in the marquee at the rear of the pub and requires moving indoors by the staff. Not such a big job given that this old 'Peppers' table has been augmented with a sturdy set of wheels.