Ma Pardoes

No visit to the West Midlands is complete without a visit to Ma Pardoes, or, as it is really called, the Old Swan Inn.  Set on a busy main road in Netherton, it is quite a wonder, being one of the original remaining four home brew pubs when CAMRA was formed.  Again I have been quite a few times, firstly on one of the Mystery Coach trips run by a noted CAMRA member in Manchester, Ken Birch aka Ben Chestnut. Now why these trips were down as "mystery" I don't know, as we always ended up in the Bull and Bladder and Ma Pardoes. Then the legendary Mrs P was alive and kicking, but alas no longer so. For those interested in the history of the pub, there is as complete a go at it as you are likely to come across - here.

The main difference between these far off days and now is that the pub was extended in 1986 and now has somewhat oddly, two front doors and a set of rambling rooms behind the famous bar where a huge cast iron stove, now behind protective mesh still dominates, along with the stunningly grand ceiling with its swan motif. The large snug on the left, complete with piano, would be a splendid place to take someone else's wife for a drink, as indeed would be any of this maze of marvellously old fashioned rooms. Wandering around it, with its faded Victorian and Edwardian grandeur made you want to settle in and wait for the sing song.  Atmosphere in buckets and you just can't manufacture that.  It comes through time and people.

We sat in the old main bar and listened to the thick Black Country accents bantering with each other. The beer is still brewed here, but perhaps doesn't reach the heights of Holden's or Batham's, though Ma Pardoe's Original at 3.5% is still worth drinking and the pub worth visiting for its own unique feel.  No particular warm welcome here, but an easy acceptance of us wandering round looking at the various rooms.  They must be used to it.

We only stayed for one here, but I still recommend it.

Back in the day when The Little Pub Company was still going, we used to visit here and the Vines for pre or post lunch pints when venturing out to eat in one of their pubs with friends from the area. Who can forget the Cradley Sausage Works, Desperate Dan Pie Factory or Mad O'Rourkes? Not me. They had a motto on all their receipts. "Please drink harder and faster" Wouldn't be allowed now.

Remarkably, the Old Swan is owned by Punch Taverns. 

Red House Boutique Stourbridge

In Stourbridge for two nights, we stayed in the recently built - within the last two or three years that is - Premier Inn. This proved to be very handy for the Town Centre, just across the busy dual carriageway, past the Bus/Rail Interchange and you were there.  The walk popped you out via an underpass beside the Red House.

According to WhatPub this was formerly a Last Orders pub. Now these, on the whole, and I don't think I'm being unfair here, tend to be aimed at the lower end of the market. But this one had been done up very nicely, making the most of a modern design with a good mix of tables, high poseur tables and bench seating and seemed to all of us like a decent place to drink. A good range of beer from the wicket from the likes of Three Tuns, Holdens, Wye Valley and Enville among others didn't make us at all inclined to leave either -and we found out - a discount for CAMRA members.  For those requiring snacks, there were many exotics, including six different varieties of pork scratchings. It does have one little trick for the unwary of being up a small set of steps, but that kind of thing is only likely to trip you up on the way out. Now this was a Wednesday evening, usually a day of the dead for pubs, but a lively crowd stood outside about eight o'clock, supping ale and chatting happily. It was relatively quiet when we entered and once again we were greeted with great enthusiasm from the lone barmaid.  This smashing service from smart young women seems to be a Black Country thing and, you know, it is such a pleasure to see. We rapidly established her name was Frankie and as the pub got busier and busier, she flew up and down serving all speedily and with great charm.

We wandered on, as you do in a strange place, to the Duke William, which was another beautiful old boozer, owned and run by Craddocks Brewery, a new one on me. This was a great place which we all liked enormously. A mixed crowd and an unspoilt interior charmed us all - as did the smashing barstaff - all female - who again couldn't have been nicer. Alas though, into each life a little rain must fall. None of us cared for the beer that much. Well, you can't have everything, but I'd go back in a heartbeat for the pub itself and maybe we just caught it on an off day. I'd like to think so.

On the way back to the hotel, we passed the Red House once more. The crowd had grown, but many of the same stalwarts we'd passed over two hours previously were still there.  Naturally we nipped in for a nightcap. It turned out that the cause of the crowd was a leaving do for someone or other, as revealed by the heroic Frankie, still controlling things brilliantly.

I think it was still open when we left around midnight.  Make hay while the sun shines.

The beer was excellent too and as we wended our way to breakfast the next day, Frankie was there again, giving us a cheery wave as we passed.  What a girl. 

We did call in again on the Thursday for one and it was pretty dead. Our hostess must have been glad of the rest.  We ended up in the Waggon and Horses where we were well looked after in a tremendous pub by, you've probably guessed it,  a couple of very nice lasses.  As I said, they seem to specialise in it in the Black Country.

The Bull and Bladder

The home of Batham's Brewery, officially the Vine, but known by many by its alternative name as above,  is a fine place indeed.  The interior has four rooms linked by a central corridor, with brown glazed tiles on the walls and a serving hatch to service the various different spaces.  Like many, when there, I tend to be in one of the rooms off the main corridor, as indeed, most visitors do, but it is the inner sanctum, the public bar (though I don't actually know how they refer to it locally) that really is the prize spot. But wait a minute. This isn't a big room and there is pub etiquette to think of. You don't just march in to a place like this and  plonk yourself down.  Locals use this space and yes, they have a right to some respect and thus it is, that although I'd poked my head round the door more than once, I don't recall ever sitting there for a couple of pints. Until now. We called in on a Thursday just before teatime and the public bar was nearly empty. We were in the sweet spot after which the lunchtime mob has long gone and the teatime regulars had scarcely started to drift in.  There was probably five or six within and with us four, ten at most. The bar wouldn't comfortably hold more than two and a half times that, so you see my point I hope. It looked reasonable to do so, so we entered the holy of holies and sat in the empty seats below the main bow window. We were given a friendly welcome by the (once again excellent barmaid - a Black Country speciality it seems - and nods from the locals. So far so good.

The pub itself has a history that can easily be discerned by our ubiquitous friend, Google, but of course I will mention its wonderful exterior, for this is that rarest of beasts, a pub that looks just as good outside as it is splendid inside. That's a lot rarer than you might think.  We parked in the handy car park opposite which gives a great view of the pub. While the others darted inside, I paused to observe and take in the place. It is a remarkably handsome building, two tone yellow and cream in colour, dark wood windows and its famous slogan painted at roof level in block capitals, "BLESSING OF YOUR HEART - YOU BREW GOOD ALE". Adjacent and attached is the brewery, with the proud words, "The Birthplace of Genuine Beer".  No false modesty here. They are proud of their pub, their brewery and their beer. And so they ought to be.

Batham's is a small company, with ten houses. That seems to suit them, though they do have a small free trade of around 20 accounts. I recommend having a look at the brewery's website which allows you to download, free of charge, The History of Batham's Black Country Brewery, a fascinating read, with many old photos.

Back in the public bar, we ordered pints of bitter and savoured this most traditional of brews, with its slightly sweet opening and bitter finish. Too good to have just one, we had another then left them to it.  The locals would be in soon.

Batham's is one of a very few breweries that still deliver beer in hogsheads of 54 Imperial gallons.

The Vine is situated at:

10 Delph Road,
Brierley Hill,
West Midlands.
DY5 2TN

Go there! 

Confidence or What?

I mentioned as a footnote in my latest blog that we had visited the Beacon Hotel in Sedgley on our recent Black Country trip. This pub is an old friend of ours, but I was taken aback to learn from our leader that we had last visited in in October 2009.  Gosh it didn't seem anything like as long ago. Doesn't time fly?

Much has been written about this pub and I recommend for those that wish to know a bit about its history to read Jeff Evans splendid piece here.  We entered the pub at about twenty five past two. Now this would not normally be a key piece of information, but here in the Black Country where they follow a different path in so many ways, it was important and it brought memories back.  We had just squeezed in before the pub closed for the afternoon at half past two.  We quickly ducked into the parlour and ordered beer from the odd servery hatch with its sections facing out into each of the separate drinking areas, pausing only order pints of Pale and to specify straight glasses as opposed to the handled jugs preferred here by the majority, not as a result of any modernity or nod to hipsters, but because they always have done. Well at least in recent memory.

We sat at the corner bench seating nearest the door and servery and promptly at two thirty, the shutters came down.  The pub was pretty busy, probably around thirty or more customers, all drinking beer on a Wednesday afternoon in a quiet part of the world, on the main Birmingham to Wolverhampton Road.  Unlike us, they all seemed to be local and quietly supped up and drifted away.  The barmaid emerged and grabbed many handled glasses in a bunch and disappeared with them.

As the pub emptied, we supped up too and left, me wondering how many pubs these days would call time on a busy pub at two thirty on a Wednesday. Not many I reckon, but that's the Black Country.

The very nice barmaid allowed me to take a photo of her with all the empties on the basis that I didn't include her face in the photo.

The other photo is of the closed servery. You have to trust me on the half past two bit.

Snacks. Again.

Are snacks in pubs a good thing? I'd say so, but in the never ending search for margin and profit - just look at the good old Morning Advertiser for tips on how to do so - are pubs missing a trick in not supplying simple, reasonably priced snacks to customers, who will then carry on supping?  Many of us just don't want a meal in a pub, but other than crisps, nuts and scratchings, there is little to sustain you if you are out for a few pints and feel a tad peckish.  A full meal will stop the most hardened pint drinker in his or indeed her tracks. Remember the days when you could get a sandwich or filled roll more or less anytime? Or the pie warmer with its last dried out pie finding a sure sale at 9.30 in the evening?

Now some London pubs have been doing this for some time with a more gourmet approach. Simple food such as Scotch eggs or pork pies, garnished with a few leaves and a sliver of tomato, served on a roof slate for north of five notes, but while that may be a port in a storm, it doesn't quite cut the mustard - pun intended.  No My Dears you want to get yourself to the Black Country where pubs are still an astonishing throwback to the seventies, without the smoke.  Here you can buy a pork pie in almost any pub at all, or a filled cob - cheese and onion only - for no more than two quid and often less. OK. No added garnish and no roof slate or board - just a plate and a pit of Colman's English Mustard -  but you do get a locally made pie, or a crusty, chewy cob, filled on the premises, with a hunk of cheese and a big chunky slice of onion to keep you going.  Matched with a peerless pint, what more could one want?

Of course, even in the Black Country,  there are plenty of pubs doing meals.  Our first stop, on a Tuesday lunchtime, in Sedgley, is a case in point. Busy with diners and with exceptionally kept beer, the White Lion was doing a roaring trade in meals. The Landlady, a veteran publican, chatted merrily to us as she rushed about and we joked about the Good Beer Guide entry remark of "You won't leave here hungry". "You definitely won't". she retorted.  This was a turnaround pub we were advised, something the Landlady and her husband - the beer man - specialise in doing.  Giving the people what they want still works. We were in beer mode so just had a couple of pints, but I bet we could have got a filled roll if we'd asked.

We did ask in the Bull's Head along the road. "All gone" quoth the barmaid "but hang on."  A quick shout out the back and a reply "How many? We'll make some fresh for you."  Cheese and onion of course, as big as a baby's head and £1.40 each. Of course we stayed for a couple more pints of Holdens, hopefully proving my point.

Reasonably priced and tasty simple snacks aren't the most sophisticated of things, but they do keep people in pubs. Cheap to produce, good mark up. Worth doing in the right circumstances I'd say.

I wrote about this before here nearly four years ago. At least I'm consistent. 

After we left the Bull's Head, we arrived at the famous Beacon of Sarah Hughes Mild fame, just before half past two, in time to get one pint before they chucked quite a crowd out. The Black Country is very old fashioned in so many ways. Half past two afternoon closing eh?