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.

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.

Wellingborough - Pt.1

The Northamptonshire town of Wellingborough is, for many, just one of several glimpsed at high speed on the train up-country from St Pancras. A sizeable town for sure, but the trajectory of the rail line which skirts its eastern edge means you see precious little of the busy market town centre, less still its pubs. It's always been something of an occasional visit for me, Kettering being closer, Bedford that bit bigger for a day out. But recent pub openings, including Hart Family Brewer brewpub The Old House, and a couple of very good micropubs, one of which is practically on the station platform, have made the stop a much more attractive proposition of late.

Of course another part of the attraction is that Wellingborough lies at the very heart of the Northamptonshire Table Skittles tradition, or it certainly should be! Whilst I've little doubt that almost every pub and club in the town would have had a skittles table at one time, sadly very few remain now, in fact I know of only one table at The Locomotive, a pub which has already featured on this blog. Which is not to say that Wellingborough has turned its back on pub games, far from it in fact.

The Wellingborough Pool League is well established in the town, as is league Darts with even the tiny Little R'Ale House micropub fielding a team. The other pub game played in Wellingborough is the slightly rarer 4-pin version of Bar Billiards, an example of which can be seen here in the lounge bar of the Ranelagh Arms.

The Ranelagh is a true backstreet locals pub, tidy and well-run, and an entirely new one to me, located as it is in an area that I'd never had call to pass through. In fact it's one of the closest traditional pubs to the rail station, and well worth the short diversion down Ranelagh Road off Midland Road from the station, if that's the way you arrive into the town centre.

It's a true hotbed of sport and games, from supporting local football and amateur boxing, to the traditional pub staples of Darts and Pool. Two teams play Bar Billiards at the pub in the Summer and Winter leagues of the Wellingborough & District Bar Billiards Association, a small but well-established league.

Venues for Bar Billiards in the town have come and gone over the years, the most recent loss being the Rising Sun which is now permanently closed. One of the beauties of Bar Billiards as a pub game is the limited space required to house a table, with play from just one end rather than the all-round cueing of Pool that usually requires a dedicated games area. So new venues have proved relatively easy to find, and the league has remained stable at eight teams playing from five pubs and clubs in and around the town.

One of the latest to introduce a table is the Old England II, sister pub of the Old England in Northampton, and part of a small chain of speciality ale and cider houses. The Old England II has fully embraced the game, with two teams now playing from the pub in the Wellingborough league. The pub is a fairly sizeable open-plan affair with plenty of room for this and Darts. The licensee is also looking out for a skittles table, which would be a great addition to the pub, and go some way to helping this most traditional of Northamptonshire games survive in the town.

Erewash Hotel, Ilkeston, Derbyshire (Closed)

The Derbyshire town of Ilkeston was, until quite recently, famous for being the largest in the country with a passenger line running through it, and yet no rail station to call its own. On the 2nd of March 2017 this anomaly was finally put right with the opening of a shiny new station on the Midland Mainline, bringing the town within 10 minutes of central Nottingham, and suddenly a whole lot easier to get to for pub-goers like myself who tend to avoid using buses wherever possible. Great news because Ilkeston is blessed with a fair few pubs, many of which I've found are well-worth travelling for.

From the perspective of this blog, Ilkeston has also achieved some measure of fame by giving its name to one of the two local skittles leagues. The whole area immediately north of Derby and Nottingham maintains a strong skittling tradition, a version of Long Alley Skittles the game of choice for generations of pub and club-going men, and to a lesser extent the women of the area. The popularity of Long Alley in this part of the East Midlands is undoubtedly connected with the heavy industries that once dominated the working landscape, the game remaining particularly strong in former colliery areas like Ilkeston, Ripley, and Clay Cross. In fact it's likely that the tall skittle pins which are such a distinctive feature of the game would often have been turned-up from the abundance of discarded pit-props found locally, a service which is still offered today by at least one local skittles maker I'm aware of.

The Erewash Hotel lies on the eastern side of the town, conveniently located just a short walk from the new rail station. The pub takes its name from the nearby river valley, which itself defines the course of the Erewash Valley railway line. I don't think it operates as a hotel these days though. Don't be fooled by the striking Banks's Brewery livery on the corner of the pub, the Erewash is now free of tie and all the better for it in my opinion. I certainly enjoyed my pint of Nottingham brewed Shipstone's Bitter, and aim to look-in at the pub next time I'm passing in the hope the excellent dark Mild is available from this recently revived local brewing name.

The interior of the pub has been opened out over the years to form one large traditionally furnished room that's split into two distinctive areas by the original entrance hallway. It's a beautifully maintained pub that's clearly well-loved by it's locals.

To left of the entrance is bench seating and one of two Pool Tables at the pub, traditional games being at the very heart of the Erewash Hotel's appeal. To the right is a Dartboard, also one of two, and a satisfyingly busy trophy cabinet, the contents of which include the shield shown here which is for Long Alley Skittles.

Competitive skittles is played at the pub in the Ilkeston & District Long Alley Skittles League, a Sunday league of two divisions made up of around 16 teams playing from pubs and clubs in and around the eponymous town.

The skittle alley is accessed through a small games area at the rear of the pub, home to Pool and Darts. Most alleys in the Ilkeston League are now either indoor or covered, though there are plenty in the Notts and Derby area that are still entirely open to the elements. Hence the game is predominantly a Summer pastime, though the Ilkeston League has Summer and Winter competitions, and the Notts/Derby Border League operates a Winter competition for venues with an indoor alley.

Indoor skittle alleys like the one at the Erewash Hotel can present problems for spectating the play, many only viewable from one side, or to a limited number of players. At the Erewash they've aimed to get around this by installing a large angled mirror at the 'throwing' end of the alley (above). As you can hopefully see in this photograph, the mirror makes viewing the game possible even from the adjacent indoor games area, located around the corner from the alley and with no direct view of the skittles frame. I've seen a similar solution at a pub in the Cotswolds, where the totally enclosed skittle alley is fitted with a small CCTV camera overlooking the frame, and a small television in the seating area which serves to relay the action to players and spectators (the New Inn at Heanor is in the process of installing a similar televised system).

With the Summer skittles league due to kick-off within the next few weeks, I can see myself returning to Ilkeston and surrounding villages more than once through the Summer, and it would certainly be nice to catch a game at some point. For those of us travelling by train, it's worth knowing that the excellent Dewdrop holds the title as unofficial waiting room, being just a stones-throw from the new station. A great traditional 'Beer and Cheese & Onion Cob' pub, though sadly the outdoor skittle alley remains out of action.

UPDATE: Since this post was published, the owners of the Erwash Hotel have retired and closed the pub.

Ship Inn, Porlock, Somerset

The Ship Inn is the kind of old, attractive, and genuinely characterful Somerset village pubs that tourists like myself dream of finding on Summer holidays. All whitewashed stone and floral displays, it's certainly picture-postcard pretty on the outside, but it's the rambling unspoilt interior that's really special. The diminutive bar (below) is particularly appealing, and regarded as something of a rare heritage survivor by those that know about these things. Even those of us that don't can't help but be charmed by its unspoilt and unfussy cosiness, a welcome legacy of successful and sympathetic ownership over many years. I was there with my partner, and she can perhaps be forgiven for not fully understanding the wash of warm nostalgia I felt in the bar of the Ship, because a pub like this represents something of my own personal pub-going past.

In my youth, newly enabled by driving license and a cheap set of wheels, the West Country became our favourite Summer playground. Minehead and the cheap chalet accommodation of Butlins Holiday Park was something of a favourite, but every quaint former fishing village along the north coast enjoyed our noisy patronage. And whilst I've no doubt that my recollections of the time are heavily clouded by the fog of youthful, sunburnt nostalgia (as well as unhealthy quantities of West Country ale and cider), it seems that every pub we spent time in was as unspoilt and 'West Country Smuggler-ish' as the Ship Inn. Memories that are all the more fondly recalled because so few of these pubs seem to have survived without recourse to bland modernisation, or worse still, permanent closure in the intervening years.

Which is not to say that the Ship Inn is some kind of heritage time warp, untouched by the passing of time. As the excellent 'Short History' page on the pubs website makes clear, the Ship Inn has seen its fair share of change over the years. Of course change is a given in the pub trade, in fact it's essential that pubs adapt to reflect customer demand, yet so few manage to do it in a way that respects the all-important 'social' history of the pub in the way it's been achieved at the Ship.

This Ship Inn is not to be confused with its namesake at nearby Porlock Weir. Not that the locals would make that mistake. This Ship lies at the bottom of the notoriously steep Porlock Hill, and is known locally as the 'Top Ship'!... Bare with me. The other Ship is a little way up the coast, close to the harbour and overlooking the Bristol Channel, and hence is known by all as the 'Bottom Ship'. If, like us you're new to the area, it's probably best to try both just to be sure...

The principal attraction of the Ship to many may not be the lovely heritage bar, but the wide range of local ales and ciders crammed onto the attractive wood-panelled bar-counter. I won't deny that this was a major draw for me, but we could equally have enjoyed the terraced garden, the restaurant, or of course a 'hand' or two in the pubs excellent skittle alley.

The Skittle Alley is located in an outbuilding to the rear of the pub, and to all the world appears as old and original as the inn itself. In truth, whilst the building itself is certainly old, it's conversion to a skittle alley occurred more recently. Again, I refer you to the history page of the website, which locates the original alley as being adjacent to the pubs stabling to the right of the arched entrance.



In common with most parts of the West Country, skittles remains popular with both sexes in this part of Somerset. Competitive ladies skittles is covered by the Minehead & Porlock League, whilst the men compete in the Dunster League. You won't find much in the way of competition in the Summer months though, the game being predominantly a Winter pastime due to work and holiday commitments.

I know from playing Northamptonshire Table Skittles for my local pub team, that one of the attractions of league play is the opportunity to visit pubs and clubs that perhaps wouldn't normally be on your radar. The downside of this is playing at venues which may fall short of your own personal pub standards, particularly when it comes to the lottery of beer choice! Some venues are certainly more popular with visiting teams than others, but I'd imagine that most teams would relish the opportunity to play, win or lose, at the Ship Inn, such is the all-round appeal of the pub.

Golden Lion, Hereford

This was only the second time I'd visited the Golden Lion, yet the pub has already become a firm favourite of mine, perhaps even my new favourite pub in a city blessed with far more good pubs than I can possibly visit in a day.

The first occasion was a summer evening several years ago, the bar busy with locals, a world cup football match being largely ignored on the telly in the corner. By happenchance I'd also arrived on the night of an even more hotly-contested match between local rivals in the Ladies section of the Hereford City Quoits League. As a result it proved a difficult night to engage anyone in the kind of idle conversation I'm accustomed to in pubs like the Golden Lion, and what's more, I didn't feel that my amateurish photographic skills would have been welcome that night. Taking photographs while players are concentrating on their game is a definite no-no in my view, and besides, it's my experience that ladies teams can be particularly camera-shy! I took a few discreet pics for the record and sauntered off into the night, vowing to return when the pub was a bit less busy.

Weekday afternoons are a good time to take photos in pubs and chew the fat with licensees, albeit that it may not show a pub at it's vibrant best. Sparse of customers, sometimes empty in fact, but all the better for the kind of uninterrupted views that are essential to this blog, and much less chance of disturbing camera-shy locals of course. It can also be the best time to get creative with what remains of the days natural light, infinitely better than trying (and usually failing!) to get the white balance just right in a bar with neon strip-lights. My second visit to the Golden Lion confirmed what I'd strongly suspected the first time round. This pub is indeed my new favourite in Hereford.

Needless to say, Barrels, Beer In Hand, and Hereford Beer House fans will be scratching their heads in bemusement at this choice, and I have to admit that there are far better pubs and bars in the city for the beer and cider enthusiast. So it's perhaps more accurate to say that in the context of this blog, the Golden Lion is currently my favourite pub in Hereford, because this blog is all about the pub itself and not the beer or cider. On this blog I focus exclusively and unapologetically on a pubs place in the community, the social aspects of pub-going, and of course the traditional games that still play such an important role at community locals like the Golden Lion. In this regard, you'd be hard-pressed to find better in Hereford or anywhere for that matter.

The Golden Lion is that little bit out of the way as Hereford pubs go, in fact I've little doubt that most visitors to the city, and even some of its more regular pub-goers might struggle to place the pub. Located in a residential area known as Widemarsh, the pub sits almost opposite the old Hereford Lads Club Cricket Ground, and near a patch of former industrial land that was once the site of the mighty Evans Cider Works (swallowed-up and closed by the even mightier Bulmers).

Internally, the pub retains a very traditional bar and separate dining lounge, separated by a small entrance vestibule with hatch opening for the former off-sales, a feature of just about every pub until supermarkets muscled in on the lucrative take-home trade. The pub is both unspoilt and beautifully maintained, with that cosy 'lived-in' feel that all the very best 'locals' pubs have. Landlady Paula Watson runs a tight ship for the benefit of a loyal band of regulars, as well as a bewildering menagerie of largely domesticated animals including that most traditional of pub pets, a swearing Parrot! This is a true 'community' local, and the landlady and locals have recently been acknowledged for 25 years of fundraising for the local St Michael's Hospice, a thoroughly positive aspect of pubs and pubgoing that's rarely acknowledged by those who seem to think pubs like this have had their day.

I love the place, and was made so welcome by Paula on what was a slow post-Christmas Thursday afternoon. I was given the run of the pub for my photographs, and even forgiven the heinous crime of moving the dogs favourite chair to access the well-used, but off-season Quoits Board (right). They were still eyeing me with suspicion when I left...

It was this Quoits board that was in use on my first visit, indeed the licensee can be seen in the photo below getting a few practice throws in after the cut and thrust of the ladies match had wrapped-up for the night. It's a typical red and green painted concrete board, the standard item throughout the Hereford area, mounted on a steel stand with netting to catch errant quoits. A solid bit of kit built to withstand the rigours of twice-weekly league action and more, which is sadly more than can be said for the league itself...

I was lucky enough to meet one of the stalwarts of the local Quoits league at the Golden Lion that afternoon, a local who's been involved in the organisation of the league from its very beginnings, and still throws a mean Quoit in the ladies game to this day. The Hereford City Quoits League started as a mens competition in 1950, with the ladies section joining the fun a couple of years later. It would have been a substantial league in those days with dozens of teams, and just one of many similar competitive leagues throughout the West Midlands and Welsh Border area. There are now perhaps just half a dozen leagues in total, and the Hereford league has reduced to a similar number of venues in and around the city. In fact I was greatly saddened to learn that almost 70 years of mens competitive Quoits in the city had only recently come to an end!

When a games league shrinks to just a single division and just a handful of teams, the writing is usually on the wall for its long-term survival. Thankfully the ladies section carries on, albeit that this too finds itself in a similar position to the recently demised mens league with no more than half a dozen teams currently active. The sturdy concrete boards will presumably endure for as long as pubs like the Golden Lion survive, but for how long the game will be played at league level in Hereford and elsewhere remains to be seen.

Other games which are played competitively at the Golden Lion are Darts, Pool, and Skittles. The Skittle Alley (above) is tucked away behind rabbit hutches and fish ponds at the rear of the pub. An old alley, thoroughly spruced-up for play in the Hereford & District Invitation Skittles League, and the Hereford City Ladies Skittles League. The Hereford leagues are unique as far as I can tell in using what look like ten-pin bowling pins rather than the usual dumpy skittle pins found in the West Country and elsewhere. Until very recently I thought this was a relatively modern development, probably down to expediency, and a good use of the wood from bowling alleys once past their prime. But recently I've seen a photo of a 1935 winning team in the Hereford League, the smartly suited gentlemen posing with a full set of the very same styled pins. This date even predates the arrival of American servicemen during the second world war, hitherto, my most likely explanation for this skittling anomaly. Somebody knows why Hereford skittlers use different wood to practically every other league in the country...

The magnificent Hereford & District Invitiation Skittles League Champion of Champions Cup, current holders Harry's Lads.

The 'spare' Quoits Board in the Skittle Alley, recently returned from a brief league-loan at Broadleys in Hereford.