'I went on a bar crawl in underrated UK town with nation's most beautiful pubs'

03 November 2023 , 11:53

419 0

The exceptional Beacon Hotel in Dudley (Image: GRAHAM YOUNG)

The aesthetically delightful 'beautiful pub capital' of the UK is perhaps not where you'd expect.

If you've ever been to Dudley, then there's a good chance it was as part of trip to the britches-hoistingly exceptional Black Country Living Museum, to sample the town's intriguingly orange delicacy of deep fried chips or to hear one of the UK's finest accents.

Unless you're in the know - whether as a paid up member of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) or as a pint enthusiast aware of Dudley's qualities - then it's unlikely that you'll have been there for the pubs. Yet you should, as the mid-sized town of 80,000 leads the pack when it comes to excellent places to drink.

Dudley has three watering holes rated three-stars for their interiors by CAMRA's Pub Heritage Group, which has spent years traipsing across the country judging the finest historical inns and bars still serving. To put that into context, the whole of Kent has four, Essex three, and Bristol just one.

'I went on a bar crawl in underrated UK town with nation's most beautiful pubs' eiqxiqetirkinv

The Old Swan in Netherton is one of Dudley's three-star pubs (Sunday Mercury)

Although cities like Edinburgh and York have more, Dudley is streaks ahead of any other town, especially when the Horse and Jockey on its outskirts is counted alongside the Waggon and Horses, Beacon Hotel and Old Swan to give the settlement one three-star pub for every 20,000 people.

Cider maker furious after cherry-flavoured drink banned as name 'is too sexual'

Three-starers are deeply rare. They must have stayed wholly or largely intact, in terms of layout and fittings, for the last 50 years. If their landlords have moved them around too much during that time, they must retain rooms or features that are truly rare or exceptional to be awarded CAMRA's highest status.

Around 300 pubs are in this category across the country, meaning one for every 223,000 Brits. Lucky Dudley locals are blessed with more than eleven-times the concentration of historically poignant pubs than most of us. By contrast, those doomed to live in the barren, pub-light county of Surrey have just one three-star inn for every half a million people.

On a rainy October day, having been told of Dudley's country topping status by a well-informed travel companion, we decided to check out this hostelry hub - fresh off the back of a trip to the Black Country Living Museum, of course. It certainly didn't disappoint.

First up was the Old Swan in the borough of Netherton. According to CAMRA, this is a "legendary pub in the annals of real ale - when the organisation was formed in 1971 it was one of only four pubs to have kept its home-brewing tradition since built."

'I went on a bar crawl in underrated UK town with nation's most beautiful pubs'

There are just three three-star pubs in the UK (Sunday Mercury)

Their beer experts have claimed "It is one of the most distinctive public bars in the whole of the UK". Walking into the Swan, or Ma Pardoe's as locals call it, is like wandering back in time several decades. A few brief, not totally unfriendly stares greet you as you cross the threshold and step beneath an enamel ceiling depicting the eponymous swan.

A smoking room is situated out back, past a mad looking Wurlitzer like organ occasionally played by the landlord, or so we were told. We settled into the comfortable seats to sip a warm pint of ale and reflect on the terribly sad things we'd learned about coal mining in the West Midlands.

The next on our (admittedly quite diminutive) pub crawl was the Beacon Hotel, one of the best pubs I've been to. We arrived five minutes after the opening time to find all but one of its tables full and the atmosphere buzzing. A number of different rooms, each with a slightly different feel, are centred on a small, singular bar, populated by three tenders.

They spin on this central axis 360 degrees whenever a customer appears at the small serving hatches, delivering cheese and onion cobbs and pints of delicious beer, both absurdly cheap.

"The most remarkable feature is the highly unusual serving arrangement, a tiny glazed-in cubicle which sits between the front snug and the much larger smoke room," writes CAMRA, calling it an "unspoilt gem of a four-room pub with a working mid-Victorian tower brewery attached. Sarah Hughes bought the business in 1921 and little has changed since the Twenties."

Since CAMRA launched its historical interiors finder back in June, anyone with an interest in pubs has had free access to an incredible database. Anytime you're plotting a walk through the countryside, a trip to a new town or are hankering after somewhere close to home but new to try out, you can find the nearest one, two or three star drinking den.

Pub makes Camra Good Beer Guide for 50 years and still has same skittles table

Without fail, both of the two in Dudley and the four across the country I've visited since have been the kind of cockle warming boozers you'd fully expect to call an impromptu lock-on or descend into a full-blown knees-up come a Saturday evening.

CAMRA decided to conduct its research not simply as an act love of Britain's pubs, but to try and save them. Having succeeded in its founding aim of snatching real ale from the brink of extinction where it teetered in the 1970s, now the organisation is trying to save Britain's best pubs.

They've got a real fight on their hands. Figures show that 383 pubs, or more than two a day, shut down in the first six months of this year, reports the Guardian. That almost matches the total for the whole of 2022, when 386 closed down.

Once they're gone, they're incredibly hard to get back, and their long, long histories impossible to recreate. If you want to help save them, or just enjoy their beautiful interiors while they last, then the CAMRA list is the place to find them.