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Leamington Today - Pubs & Clubs
Disclaimer: The views and opinions represented below are purely personal and that of the author and are not intended to be in any way authoritative or at all serious.
Bar 44 Location: 44 Clarendon Street
One of the more upmarket pubs that fall within the area ubiquitously known as The Brown Mile, Bar 44 would actually prefer not to be known as a pub at all. It is not a boozer. It is a wine bar. And as such it caters for a far more condescending individual than those who regularly frequent the many glug-&-slash licensed premises that litter this dear old inebriated town of Leamington Spa. Bar 44, sir, is a "bar". They serve cocktails and bottled beer. They serve alcoholic fruit drinks - alcopops - without nary a smirk or a stifled giggle to the many upwardly-mobile-aspiring shirts and dresses that patronize Bar 44's topnotch lounge. And they have live music. Not your average beer swilling, gut busting, hairy arsed minger with an Iron Maiden fetish and no friends but real, proper, live jazz. This is a place for polite conversation and intellectual repartee. You'll need to wear cufflinks and slick your hair back to get in here boys...
It's also a place where the up and coming attempt - as in every other boozer & wine bar in Britain - to get up and come... to achieve a legover in other words. It's just that at Bar 44 you can usually be confident of acquiring a more upmarket legover than you would have been lumbered with at the Old Dog And Harpooned Hound down the road. The clientele of Bar 44 are invariably immaculately dressed and presented. The lads wear nice shirts and polished shoes and the women dress in very expensive looking dresses and earrings and sit provocatively upon the bar stools in the windows that overlook the street thus displaying the contents of their purses to all the drooling Iron Maiden fans who lurk about outside hoping to catch a quick flash of a "rich bird's minge". You'll pay a little more for such high class ambience than you would at a spit and sawdust pub of course but peering down the cleavage of an over-powdered bosom as you discuss the life and works of Claude Debussy is infinitely more preferable than picking pubes out of your beer as the hairy oaf next to you vomits up his lower colon in the snug of The Hope & Anchor.
Benjamin Satchwell Location: 112 - 114 The Parade
Alternatively known as The Bent Jam In Me Satchel, this humongously sprawling pub easily grabs first place in The Biggest Boozer in Britain Competition, beating even Johnny Vegas to the number one position. It’s that big! Basically it covers the floor area of two whole shops and stretches from the main entrance doors on The Parade all the way back to the exit on Bedford Street which runs parallel at the rear. I’m aware that this information will mean nothing to you if you’re not a local. But just by retaining this information you can kid people that you are a local even if you’re not which is the whole effing point of this guide so shut yer mouth.
The first thing to note about the Benjamin Satchwell is that it is yet one more link in the nationwide JD Wetherspoon’s chain that stretches from the landfill site at Land’s End all the way up to John O’Goats in Scotia. In fact I’m pretty sure that John O’Goats is a Wetherspoonery too. Basically this means a plebeian menu, no in-house music or God-awful television screens showing footie lowlights and an eclectic variety of beers, some of which are more interesting than others... i.e. they usually have guest ales which possess intriguing names as Old Walrus’s Sputum, Mother-In-Law’s Cold Ladled Fanny and Big Dog’s Newly Pumped Love Sauce. Personally I can recommend the whiskey.
The pub itself is always busy but seems to explode under the weight of its own clientele at night - packed to bursting point and beyond with a carnival-esque mixture of white trashers, suits, students, wides, queersm’dears, boobarellas, leathers and out-of-towners - all of whom seem to be able to get along well enough on the whole without there being fractiousness or chafing erupting between any of the groups. Which is cool. In fact I’ve only ever seen trouble there once and that was solely down to a bald headed Shakesbeero who couldn’t hold his grog without developing a lairy mouth. What a twot. He was soon made quiet, naturally and obviously, by his big ear-ringed girlfriend who was in the full hot flush of white trash embarrassment and outrage that Wayne was showing her up by not acting proper and obeying the invisible rules of high class boozer decorum. She was like an un-anorexic Lilly Savage with a mouth like a half eaten Cornish pasty. Wayne didn’t get his leg over that night. In truth I’m not sure he wanted to.
In all honesty the Benjie isn’t a bad boozer as boozer’s go. The food is pretty decent. So are the beers and the prices are affordable - hence the huge cross-section of Leamington society that can be found there. One word of warning though: trying to get served during the pub’s busy period (8.0pm through to about 10.0pm) is like trying to walk the wrong way through a crowd escaping from the Louisiana floods whilst trying to attract the attention of a blind American aid officer using sign language. You’re in for a long wait.
The Black Horse Location: 18 Princes Street
One of the cornerstones of Leamington's famous Brown Mile, The Black Horse sells itself as a "two bar backstreet town pub" - which apparently is a reference to the number of beer mat laden bars one may lean upon when ordering a pint of Hook Norton Best Bitter as opposed to a comment on the inadequate electric heating facilities. A bit of history for you here now: according to on-line sources the first reference to the pub was in 1872 when it was "listed as a beerhouse run by Elizabeth Hunt on Comyn Street". I am left wondering if Lizzie had a son named Mike as in the old telephone crank call joke that I and a mate used to play in our younger wilder days... " Hello? Is that The Black Horse? Good - I need to speak to one of your customers. Hunt. Mike Hunt..." Cue much mirth as you hear the bar man call for "Mike Hunt? Has anybody seen Mike Hunt?" It's funnier when you say it aloud. Honest.
Anyway, from the outside The Black Horse doesn't look as if it's changed one iota since Lizzie Hunt's day... but that is deceptive. It seems that the pub has been hugely extended creating a large lounge area from which one may finger the horse brasses with enough elbow room to swing the landlady's knickers full circle around your head whilst singing "Knees Up Mother Brown". Oh and the main entrance has been moved from Comyn Street to Princes Street. Hence the address. Doh.
Look I actually haven't got a lot to say about this pub as I've only been inside it just the once in my entire life. I seem to recall that the floor is quite high up and thus must be accessed by a number of steps... which are not at all user friendly when one has to negotiate them on the way out after one has supped ones fill of Bulmers Traditional Cider (or whatever ones tipple of choice happens to be). And I also have weird memories of cigar smoke as thick as the hide of a fat rhinocerous hanging in the air like a swirly zeppelin... but this may have been the effects of inebriation.
What can I say? It's a simple working man's pub. Drink. Eat. Slash. Dry your boots. Head home. No shag. Then do the same thing next Saturday.
Or get a life.
The Builder’s Arms Location: 38 Lansdowne Street
Throbbing in the heart of Leamington’s Brown Mile, The Builder’s Arms always reminds me of that great childhood joke which never failed to raise a titter from my 11 year old classmates and centred around a pub that was named "The Queen’s Legs" and gave rise to the Oscar Wildean punchline "I’m just waiting for the Queen’s Legs to open so I can go inside and have a drink." Ah. How we used to laugh. They don’t make jokes like that anymore alas. Nor pubs either. Hence the world is full to bursting with pubs like The Builder’s Arms and The Queen’s legs are nary to be seen. This can only be a tragedy to those of us amongst this proud nation who enjoy supping on the intoxicating tipple of topmost well fermented Royalty.
The Builder’s Arms, as long as I can remember has been a traditional working man’s pub. Rough around the edges but simple and unpretentious in its tastes and ambitions. You can practically smell the sawdust on the floor. They cater for your average pool playing footie fan who likes pub rock, cheap lager and girls in mini skirts and white stilettos who are happy to gobble them off in the alley around the back of the pub for the price of a vodka and lime. And if that’s your bag why not? (Hey, if that’s your bag I’d keep her indoors on a Friday night if I were you.)
If you want intellectually stimulating conversation on the topic of US-Iraqi politicking that is currently destabilizing the Middle East then I’d advise you to frequent a more salubrious establishment. But if you fancy quaffing your pint to the backdrop of a hundred builder’s bums wobbling in time to the prog-rock soundtrack and farting the national anthem then get yourself ensconced in the yeasty embrace of The Builder’s Arms. If you run into any trouble just tell them the joke about The Queen’s Legs...
I guarantee they’ll lap it up.
Cask & Bottle Location: 35 Kennedy Square
Yet another beer providing venue in Leamington’s hop-laden Brown Mile, the Cask & Bottle is something of a "sports pub" - i.e. whenever there’s a large sporting event occurring like Six Nation’s Rugby or The World Cup the place is instantaneously bedecked in flags, bunting and marauding beefeaters and full to the gills with the cream of England’s rugby and football supporters whose bulging beer bellies have never actually encountered a playing field closer than through their Sky TV set top boxes. These armchair experts spend hours on end displaying their hairy armpits to fellow drinkers and roaring at the wall mounted television sets every time England comes close to scoring a goal or a try or hitting double top or whatever it is our overpaid over-libidinous premier league athletes get up to when they’re actually "working".
On the plus side there’s a large-ish beer garden - or beer yard to be accurate - to the side of the pub where on hot days you can fry an egg on the concrete paving slabs as your neck bubbles up into a nice shade of red under the glare of this unremitting sun trap. Actually that’s a bit unfair - it’s actually rather pleasant to sit out, absinthe in hand and watch the chavs inch through the bottleneck of Lansdowne Street in their ridiculous sports cars with spoilers and dorsal fins flaring like Batman’s Batmobile at a Mardi Gras. Why not pop along and get pleasantly inebriated while England get trounced by another backwater country whose sports team has zero financial investment but is overflowing with home grown talent and athletic genius? It’s the stuff summer days are made of after all.
The Fox Location: 32 Clarendon Avenue
The Fox lies on the outer rim of Leamington's Brown Mile and is unmistakably a posh footie fan type of pub... huge TV screens showing all the major matches and fixtures and a bar menu that actually features dishes that optionally come without chips. Like I said: posh footie fan. Quite why the place is called The Fox I don't know as there is nothing at all rustic about the place and I doubt the Master of the Hounds ever drops in for a quick sherry (unless it's to check out the hounds at the bar). It's all very modern and slightly too airy - almost cold and lifeless in fact. But then I've only ever been there when there hasn't been a football match on the telly. I'm sure when England are getting trounced by some impoverished, unsponsored North African side the place is wall-to-wall armpits, crotch fungus and white handbags... and is altogether warmer and cosier.
Personally I'd rather go and make like a hep-cat and dig the jazz at Bar 44 with my nose well and truly in the air. Tally-ho!
Review Update: 06/04/07
In relation to the above review Pocketropolis has received the following email from Mr C.P. at The Fox:
Who the fuck do you think you are.
No we are not a footie pub, the big screen was BOUGHT for the world cup and then sold, so fucking what if it's chips with everything, it's what most customers want sadly, and you have more chance of a pair of white stilettos in Bar 44 than in here, and wall to wall fucking middle aged men which I assume you are.
WANKER!
C. P.
Katemba Inns
The Fox
32 Clarendon Avenue
Leamington Spa
In response Pocketropolis would like to thank C.P. (name and address supplied) for taking the time to write to Pocketropolis with his carefully worded feedback... although we would like to make the following points:
1) If you read the review carefully you'll realise that I actually saluted you for having a few dishes on your menu that came without chips. That you lament the fact most customers want chips with everything suggests that you and I are actually in accord with wishing that people would accept more diverse menus. If you are as frustrated with such menus as I am then why not take the bull by the horns and change yours? You could start a wonderful revolution!
2) I now accept that the television was bought solely for the World Cup and although I understand the business pressure that drove you to such a purchase I would again like to point out that, as you so quickly got rid of the thing afterwards, it suggests that once more we are actually in accord with disliking such things in a pub. I can't help but get the feeling that you are not being true to yourself. That's a great shame.
3) I made no mention at all of white stilettos but thank you anyway for your review of Bar 44.
4) As for being middle-aged I'll have you know I'm 79 next birthday so any attempts at onanism are alas well beyond me, you young whippersnapper! If I were you I'd make the most of your own talents in this area while it lasts.
Review Update: 16/09/08
Pocketropolis has received this kind response from Nicola Armstrong of Leamington Spa (email address supplied) regarding the comments above:
This site has some bloody amazing reviews. Thank you. I would like to point out that the rather impolite comments from someone at The Fox has actually made me never want to go there and I was initially tempted from your review I hope the manager of The Fox has seen this and sacked the potty-mouthed little runt.
Thanks Nicola - Pocketropolis is always glad to be of service!
The Holly Bush Location: Holly Street
Pulsating in the heart of Leamington’s Brown Mile, The Holly Bush has long been a beacon of cross-cultural diversity in the town, gathering together punters from either side of the great Campion Hill divide that separates the Leamingtonians from the Lillingtonians. Despite the patronage of the Lillington brigade - who are always stereotypically and unfairly assumed to be a bunch of work-shy yobs and bus shelter vandals - The Holly Bush has an atmosphere of good humour, easy going working class ethics and a regular supply of dry roasted salt of the earth peanut holders with semi nudey ladies printed onto them.
I have never known there to be trouble at The Holly Bush in all my years of living in Leamo and that can only be a top recommendation for those of you that want to enjoy a quiet pint without having to compete for ego space with some slack-lipped giro thief or some mouthy jobsworth motor mechanic. The beer is wallet friendly, the pool table isn't too sticky and the toilet facilities rarely overflow. All this and a pub name that has birthed numerous jokes about "Holly's bush", "needle festooned knickers" and the imagined genitalia of randy porcupines... What more can you ask for?
The Hope & Anchor Location: Hill Street
To its credit The Hope, or The Dope and W-anchor as it’s sometime known, makes no bones about what it is. Situated in the heart of Leamington’s Brown Mile, it’s simply a boozer. Nothing more, nothing less. Beer, fags and toilet facilities. And very bad karaoke on Saturday nights. Ferry Cross The Mersey. You’ll Never Walk Alone. Roll Out The Barrel. Etc. All the old granddad’s disco standards. All the punters have beer bellies - the ladies included - and bikerless proles still wear leather biker jackets like they’re the hottest thing off the Paris catwalks. Bringing your dog and tying him to the lamppost outside is an optional addition to your drinking experience. As is peeing on your boots before the poorly lit urinals. Snooker loopy nuts are we. Gertcha. You’ve won Bullies star prize...
Just don’t step on my pork scratchings when you’re in the toilets.
The Jug & Jester Location: 11 – 13 Bath Street
The Jug is that weird animal - the "crossover pub". It seems to attract people from all walks of life: office workers, students, barge living crusties, knickerless Top Shop girls and sweaty bummed footie fans who all seem to attend to their Slippery Nipples and Screaming Orgasms with nary a cross word between them. No mean feat when you consider that a mere decade or so ago The Jug was the kind of rebel rousing, sawdust strewn hostelry that made beefy police men pee their pants in fetching shades of yellow and red.
Since then The Jug has had more money thrown at it than Wembley Stadium (well, a slight over exaggeration maybe) and more slap applied to its craggy face than Nicky Hambleton-Jones. Now the place is a humourless cavern of browns and maroons, mocha banquettes and opaque lamp shades, kitted out top to bottom with architecturally perfect table tops and high chairs and fussily framed movie poster prints that vampirically suck any kind of authentic atmosphere clean out of the place. Gone are the bizarrely stained music hall posters dashed nonchalantly across the crumbling plaster, gone are the tables cannibalized from Spinning Jennies and steam powered crop planters, gone are the big bosomy barmaids from which I’m sure The Jug once took its name...
...and instead in its place we have yet another run-of-the-mill, clinically polished, demographically pitched gastro-pub which, once you’re inside, could be any pub in Leamington or indeed any pub in the entire bleeding country. The Jug has quite literally gone from lusciously powdered hills and valleys to austerely flat tundra and denuded basin in the blink of a bank manager’s eye. The heart has been ripped completely out of the entire establishment and a cocktail serving automata shoved cynically in its place.
The food is ok. The usual pre-packaged re-heated pub fare that will keep starvation at bay for a few hours. And to be fair it’s competent enough to not have you spewing up copious amounts of colon gristle over your copy of The Metro a few hours later. And the toilets are clean. And the staff are friendly. And there’s room to swing a cat at the end of a very long chain. All pluses I’m sure you’ll agree. But there is utterly no personality to the place. It’s empty even when it’s full. It’s like being buttonholed by an Ikea bore at a tupperware party.
It’s that bland.
The Lounge Location: 130 The Parade
Formerly known as The Haunch Of Venison (or The Deer’s Arse in the common vernacular), this perennially busy pub benefits hugely from its enviable location smack bang in the heart of Leamington Spa town centre and is very much what everyone a few years ago would have termed a "yuppie pub". The Lounge has wine bar pretensions which, during lunch times at least, it succeeds in achieving - a pleasantly laid back atmosphere, a tasteful selection of slightly pricey nibbles spread out on the menu and décor and furniture that are both smooth and clean limbed. One may partake of a quiet pint whilst reading one’s Guardian in the cod Tudor bay window that overlooks The Parade and the rough pug-ugly mob that teems along noisily beneath it.
At night the place becomes Chav Central and more like your average boozer than a wine bar but the atmosphere remains pleasant and urbane and it’s possible to have a pretty decent meal here as well as getting yourself sloshed on Vino de Cheapo and ham-fisted cocktails of Good Housekeeping origin.
There always seems to be a boobalicious girl in a party dress and a short chubby guy with glisteningly gelled hair, an ultra white shirt and aftershave that could strip the hairs off a porcupine’s bum standing outside The Lounge every time I walk passed it at night. The woman is always on her mobile phone calling a cab to pick her up and the guy looks torn between escorting the lady home to give her one and then sob boyish tears onto her belly or heading back into the pub to make out how hard and cavalier he is to his mates ("I’m so cool I can take it or leave it me") before going home at the end of the night to give his bacon sabre a damn good rattling. Either it’s not the same couple every time or I’m being cleverly watched by MI5 operatives...
Oxygen Location: 44 - 46 Clarendon Avenue
Well on the outer rim of Leamington's exhuasting Brown Mile, Oxygen is that intrinsically annoying animal known as "the student pub". Oh the managers will deny it. The clientele will deny it. But everybody on the outside looking in will affirm that it is indeed a "student pub". Not that there's anything wrong with student pubs. They are young and vibrant, loud and strident, full of soundbites of topical conversation and vibrating with the latest sounds... and the place is heaving with good-looking youngsters with their entire lives ahead of them flashing their young firm flesh in low cut tops and drinking as much booze as they possibly can because they know that their earliest lecture the next day doesn't start until 1.30 in the afternoon... which is why their lecturer is also out drinking with them and getting his rusty tongue down the neck of some inebriated English student with pink hair who professes a genuine liking for Samuel Richardson and 18th Century Literature as a whole and who genuinely likes gobbling off older men with utterly no dress sense or boundary issues. And you just know that after closing time the entire pub will board the big purple Unibus back to campus and shag each other senseless and with complete abandon and at the expense of the Great Birtish tax payer who has financed their student loans just so they can blow the lot on high class liquor and lime flavoured rubber johnnies. Gits!
Such is the opinion that most people have of students and student pubs which is why they tend to produce such an ambivalent reaction in people. I, however, with my ear to the ground and my nose to the trail know that this stereotypical image is about as far removed from the truth as it is possible to get. Students as a rule are dreary abstemious creatures with little or no sex drive and certainly with no appetite for carnal or alcoholic pleasures. They prefer the dusty company of first edition hardbacks and the squeal of 3 byte per second dial-up internet connections on Dos based personal computers to the rude guffaws of actual human interaction. In fact it's hardly worth going to Oxygen at all. It's all so very dry and boring. Just like drinking sawdust. I'd rather stay at home and darn my socks... grumble, grumble, grumble, privileged little oiks, moan, moan, shagathons, moan, grumble, cheap booze, moan, moan, grumble, easy lays, grumble, grumble, Samuel Richardson, grumble, moan...
The Somerville Arms Location: 4 Campion Terrace
Allegedly nothing at all to do with the skin-headed Scottish gay singer who fronted Bronski Beat and later The Communards, The Somerville Arms squats in the southern regions of Leamington’s Brown Mile and wisely refuses to answer to the name of Jimmy and never ever plays "Smalltown Boy" or "Don’t Leave Me This Way", not even for a massive bribe. Well, not to my knowledge anyway. Allegedly.
The Somerville is something of an oddity on the pub circuit - one of those pubs that is so removed from the glitz of the town centre it can never be considered cool and yet attracts enough of a twenty-something clientele that it can’t really be considered an old man’s pub either. The Somerville sits on the fence somewhere between the two like a cross dressing Sun reading hermaphrodite. The Somerville does, of course, have the usual selection of veteran ale drinking whippet walkers that sit in the warmest corner of most pubs in Britain... you know the type: dressed exclusively in faded denim, fingers stained by years of tobacco abuse, face adorned by a choppy moustache, they sit there every night nursing a pint for 5 hours while they give voice to shrivelled opinions on everything from Big Brother to the cost of bum cream and whether Derek Acorah is a genuine psychic and not just a scouse con man who faked spiritual possession just to try and get into Yvette Fielding’s doe eyed knickers. The kind of person you could listen to all night and come away knowing far less intellectually than you started with. Buy a pint if you must but don’t listen to the maudlin voices...
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