The Stirrup Cup, Barton Seagrave, Northamptonshire

The Stirrup Cup pub in the Northamptonshire village of Barton Seagrave has been on my 'to-do' list for a few years now. Somewhat remiss of me as it's little more than a twenty minute drive away and I'm not exactly a stranger to the pubs of Kettering. Of course The Stirrup Cup is not actually in Kettering, though I have to admit I've been labouring under that misapprehension for some time now. That's because the Stirrup Cup is a classic 1960's estate pub, and the old heart of Kettering town is surrounded by post-war private and social housing on all sides. Indeed Barton Seagrave only retains its unique village identity by dint of it's proximity to Wicksteed Park which acts as a greenbelt between the village and the edge of Ketterings modern-day sprawl.

Given that most of this massive housing expansion around Kettering occurred in the 60's, it's no surprise that each new estate came furnished with a shiny new-build community pub. What's slightly unusual about Barton Seagrave is that whatever pub the old village may have had prior to the building of the new estate, it's clearly didn't survive, making this modern estate pub the sole village hostelry.


This image shows The Stirrup Cup in its original guise as a 'Phipps House' (note the Phipps NBC Star on the gable end). Originally featured in Watney Mann house magazine 'The Red Barrel', it's reproduced here with the kind permission of Jessica and Ray of the Boak & Bailey beer and pubs blog

Built in 1964 as part of a new private housing estate that would hugely expand the old ironstone village. Originally branded a 'Phipps House', though even then the pub would have been in the hands of the mighty Watney Mann empire who would soon-enough close and demolish both the Northampton breweries, and re-badge most of the estate as Mann's houses (the Mann's Brewery 'George & Dragon' logo was common on pubs throughout Northamptonshire until quite recently).

As was the norm in those days, the Stirrup Cup was built as a two-room pub, the Public Bar to the right and a slightly larger Saloon Bar through the left-hand door. I'm pleased to say this layout remains largely unchanged, though the games and sport oriented Public Bar is now in the larger left-hand side of the pub, a necessary step given the huge popularity of both pastimes at the pub.

The Stirrup Cup seems to have always had a major sporting and games theme, even to the point of being renamed 'Sports' in the 90's when this local CAMRA pub guide (left) was published. Whoever surveyed the pub was clearly scathing of this incarnation, which may seem surprising given that sports themed pubs like this are arguably more 'pubby' than many of their food and beer oriented contemporaries. I think this attitude can be explained by the long editorial which prefaces the guide proper. An editorial that rails against 'theming' of any kind, favouring pubs that have something for everyone rather than specialising, sometimes to the exclusion of one group or another. This even includes, and this is perhaps even more surprising in a CAMRA publication, the burgeoning phenomena of 'beer palaces'!


Which brings me to the Stirrup Cup of today. Beautifully maintained, and on the face of it little changed. The Public Bar remains the busy evening and weekend hub of the pub, boasting all the televised sport, a pair of Pool Tables, Dartboard, Table Football and Skittles Table, with teams in all of these barring the Table Football. So still very much specialising in sport and games, but that's only half the story.

Under the current management the food trade has become crucial to the ongoing success of the Stirrup Cup, with the lounge now trading throughout the afternoon as a smart Coffee Lounge. This additional community asset was busy with customers when I visited on a Wednesday afternoon, an otherwise slow weekday session for most pubs. The Stirrup Cup has a good reputation for its food, is more family-oriented with a well-used garden to the side, and has been well and truly returned to the heart of the local community. Even the beer range is much improved, the pub now operating with a free of tie option which means they can offer beers from some of the best local breweries, I had something from Oakham Ales whilst taking these photos. I don't usually take much notice of the straplines on business websites, but the one on the Stirrup Cup homepage seems to me to sums the pub up nicely. 'Family - Sports - Local'.

If only all estate pubs were as good as this...

Of course the main reason I've wanted to visit the Stirrup Cup for so long is the hugely important games interest, and particularly the local speciality, Northamptonshire Table Skittles. Skittles is still popular in and around Kettering, and none more so than at estate pubs like the Stirrup Cup which remain the bedrock of so many pub games leagues. The home team recently 'chucked-off' in Division Four of the Kettering, Burton Latimer & District Skittles League, and will I imagine be hoping for a slightly better finish than the lowly 7th place they achieved in Division D of the recently finished Summer League.

They've certainly got the table for it, a very fine Pepper's Skittles Table, only recently refurbished by the local expert in the field, Colin Swinfen of Kilworth. A Pepper table can be distinguished from the more common W.T Black & Son models by the less curvy sides, and the netting which is a straight-up boxed design rather than the sloping net of a Blacks table. Unlike the Blacks models, these Pepper Bros Skittles Tables tend to have little in the way of information secreted about them, making a table like this quite difficult to date.

Red Lion, Brixworth, Northamptonshire (Closed and demolished)

Sometimes a blog post just gets away from you, which has sadly been the case with the Red Lion in Brixworth. I posted a single solitary photo of the pubs skittles table (below) way back in 2011, taken on my first visit to the pub following a pleasant Summer afternoon walk from nearby Pitsford Reservoir. I tried all three pubs in the village that day, the Red Lion being the most down-to-earth and all-round attractive to me, and the only one with any significant games interest at the time.

The WT Black & Son Skittles Table was set up ready for play in the games area adjacent to the public bar. I spent an hour or so 'practising' my throw on the table, and remember being pretty self-conscious about it because every time I hit the front (quite a common occurrence for a novice like myself) the hard boxwood cheeses came flying back and clattered very noisily on the tiled floor.

The pub was unusual in that the beers were from the Hook Norton Brewery, something of a rarity in this part of Northamptonshire. The bar itself was as honest and traditional as they come, nothing fancy, just cream painted wood and simple furnishings around a matchboard fronted servery. It was the kind of traditional bar room that you could easily lose an afternoon in, and quite why I didn't take any photos of it remains something of a mystery to me. I don't recall anything about the plusher lounge bar, and left planning to return and do the pub justice at a later date...

The next time the Red Lion came to my attention was later on that year, when the pub made local headlines for all the wrong reasons following an outbreak of fire. Thankfully, nobody was seriously hurt during the incident, which started in that lovely bar and caused widespread smoke and heat damage, but I guess it could easily have spelled the end for the pub right there. Thankfully the owners felt otherwise and the pub reopened a short while later.

The photos here were taken six years later. I recall that the pub had been refurbished shortly before the fire, and this is reflected in the smart appearance of the games area, which now featured Table Football (still no photos of the bar area, sorry!). The tradition of the Sunday afternoon/evening in-house skittles tournament is something I've come across at other Northamptonshire pubs, indeed my own local often had an informal game of 'Killer', a lengthy competition which roped in practically everyone in the bar at £1 a head, 'winner takes all'. I can't remember if the pub was fielding a team for league play around this time, likely it would have done at some point given the popularity of the game in this part of the county. Once again, I left with an intention to return and document the pub a bit more extensively...

Fast forward to 2018 and the Red Lion is closed, on the market, and as is often the case with pubs like this, being hawked by the agent as a prime development opportunity. An opportunity that serial pub destroyers the Co-operative Group haven't missed, and who later that year applied to demolish the pub and build a new Co-Op store on the site. This application was rejected by the Parish Council and subsequently by Daventry District Council, though sadly the reasons given have little to do with retaining the building as a pub.

The current state of the Red Lion, Brixworth is shown below, a hazy pic through a gap in the curtains the closest I've got so far to photographing that bar room. Given their track record at other community pubs like Broadleys in Hereford, I've little doubt that the Co-operative Group will appeal the planning refusal, and it remains to be seen what the future holds for the Red Lion.

Update (2023)

Sadly, the pub has now been demolished with a set of flats going up in its place. Thankfully the village of Brixworth still has two pubs, The George and the Coach & Horses, though neither of which are venues for the local tradition of Table Skittles.

Crown Inn, Woolhope, Herefordshire

As a frequent visitor to Herefordshire and the wider Three Counties area since the early 1980's, I've often found it something of a disappointment that in a county so strongly associated with the traditions of cidermaking, so few of the pubs offer much in the way of high quality local cider and perry. The ciders from Westons of Much Marcle, the county's major regional producer, have always been relatively common, but the smaller producers of high quality traditional cider and perry, of which there are now many, have often been hard to find outside of a handful of rural pubs and farmshops.

I'm pleased to say that things have improved a little in recent years, with several pubs in the county specialising in ciders from the Three Counties, and many more offering at least something from one or more of the smaller local producers. The Crown Inn at Woolhope has been a notable exception in this regard for several years now. In fact the Crown specialises in Herefordshire ciders and perries as well as the best local beers and fabulous locally sourced food. There can't be too many pubs which offer a separate cider and perry menu alongside the food and wine, an entirely local selection that even includes their own home-pressed 'Kings' cider and perry. It's for this reason that I was more than happy to return to the Crown for an excellent Sunday lunch recently.

Even if cider isn't to your taste, a diversion down the narrow winding roads to Woolhope and the attractive whitewashed Crown Inn is highly recommended, particularly in the summer when the garden, overlooked by St George's church, really comes into its own. Watch out for the local wildlife though, I very nearly had my lunch stolen by a particularly cheeky Blackbird the first time I visited the pub. Yes, even the birds love it at the Crown Inn.

The attention to detail at the Crown Inn extends to a luxury heated and covered smoking shelter at the rear of the pub (below). This space also houses the pubs Table Football, a Dartboard, and Herefordshire's local pub game Quoits. The Crown's Quoits board is a fairly typical concrete example, the standard for boards in the nearby Hereford city league. Painted in the traditional red and green and seated on a steel frame, netted to catch stray Quoits. The table is brought inside and positioned at the Darts oche for more serious play, but a set of Quoits are available from the bar for casual summertime games.

The Romany, Northampton

The 80's vogue for knocking through multi-room pubs into a single, large, easy to manage space, signalled the death-knell for many separate Bars, Snugs, and Games Rooms. It's certainly not just nostalgia which leads me to mourn the loss of this traditional multi-room layout. Different spaces serve different needs in a pub, and losing the separate bar/lounge/snug/games room layout can often remove at a stroke the pubs ability to appeal to a truly diverse customer base. It's true that fewer rooms mean less staff are required to run a pub, but I can't help feeling that the loss of flexibility and 'inclusiveness' which can result from this 'knocking-through' is just one more reason why some people have fallen out of love with the pub, let alone the loss of 'character' that almost inevitably comes with it.

Of course dull and unimaginative refurbishments of traditional pubs continue apace, but thankfully the wholesale removal of interior walls seems to be much less prevalent now. Sadly the damage has already been done in far too many traditional pubs, and there seems to be little or no desire on the part of brewers and pub owning companies to reinstate what has been lost.

The Romany in Northampton has certainly seen a number of changes to its internal layout over the years, but crucially two large separate bars have been maintained. This has undoubtedly helped in the success of the pub, where the games room concept has been taken to its logical conclusion by devoting almost half of the pubs trading area to the numerous gaming activities which take place. Gaming can be a noisy business, and a dedicated games room like the one at the Romany often makes sense, particularly with games such as Northants Skittles which can be both noisy, and occasionally hazardous in play.

So, if it's a quiet pint you're after (or perhaps a band in the evening), simply turn left at the main entrance, but if it's games you're looking for, the right-hand door will lead you to the Romany's excellent and well appointed Games Bar.

As you can see in the image above, gaming truly is the lifeblood of the Romany. League play includes everything from Darts and Pool, to the local speciality of Northamptonshire Table Skittles.

This table is one of only a handful which can now be found in what is the home town of the game. As far as I'm aware, Northamptons town centre pubs are now entirely devoid of skittles tables, though there may be a few clubs where the game can still be found. It's in traditional community pubs like the Romany, located on the edge of town and further out into the suburbs, that the game can still be found. Perhaps unusually for one of the more physical pub games, it's a Ladies League which still hold the torch for skittles play in the Northampton. It's hard to say why this might have come about, but perhaps the ladies make more of a social event of skittling than the men.

Darts and Pool are the main events at the Romany, with much of the silverware on display in the trophy cabinet coming from the Darts and Pool leagues.

There's also a very good quality open-top Football Table. The game of Table Football (or Foosball as it's now known) has dipped in popularity somewhat since the days when many pubs, and every student union bar had a table, but there are still a few about, with even league play in certain parts of the country. The British Foosball Association has a good interactive map which shows venues throughout the UK, with some limited coverage of Europe where the game is still very popular.