The Pubs of Hove - part 1: Not Quite Hove
Not Quite Hove
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| The Windmill at West Blatchington - despite the name, this is not a pub |
After surveying the pubs of Portslade last year and quite enjoying the process, if not always the beer, I decided this year that I would take on a larger challenge and strike out for Hove but not just Hove. I decided that my survey needed to cover the whole of BN3.
BN41 covers just nine pubs; BN3, by contrast, covers over forty. It was necessary, therefore, to break the area down into sections and, after much study of an area map, I found that by drawing a line down the A2023 towards the sea - Sackville Road and Nevill Road to locals - I could isolate Hangleton, Aldrington and other areas that could be described as Not Quite Hove. This gave me 12 pubs to check up on.
The other two chunks - Hove Actually and Nearly Brighton - will be covered in further blog posts, but for now let's head for the 'burbs!
BN41 covers just nine pubs; BN3, by contrast, covers over forty. It was necessary, therefore, to break the area down into sections and, after much study of an area map, I found that by drawing a line down the A2023 towards the sea - Sackville Road and Nevill Road to locals - I could isolate Hangleton, Aldrington and other areas that could be described as Not Quite Hove. This gave me 12 pubs to check up on.
The other two chunks - Hove Actually and Nearly Brighton - will be covered in further blog posts, but for now let's head for the 'burbs!
Hangleton
Hangleton and West Blatchington occupy a sprawling area at the edge of the downs and much of the area has a slightly bleak, miles-from-anywhere feel to it. For that reason its pubs shine like beacons of hope alongside a fairly limited selection of shops - takeaways, newsagents, bookies, hairdressers. Hope lasts up until you walk into one of them.
I visited both the Nevill and the Grenadier one Sunday afternoon, reasoning that food-focused family pubs, which is how both appear to advertise themselves, should be busy on a Sunday. At just after 3, the Nevill was almost empty. There were five people there when I entered; three were members of staff, and two were customers, one of whom was me.
First impressions were not great. A TV was dispensing some music channel at unignorable volume. The furniture and decor were shabby and dated and the only evidence of improvement was the tidier, neater dining area, separated from the main bar by a glass panel. The furniture there, at least, was slightly newer looking. The cask ales on offer were, perhaps inevitably, Doombar and Harvey's Best. The Harvey's was drinkable but cost an eye-watering £2.40 for a half.
First impressions were not great. A TV was dispensing some music channel at unignorable volume. The furniture and decor were shabby and dated and the only evidence of improvement was the tidier, neater dining area, separated from the main bar by a glass panel. The furniture there, at least, was slightly newer looking. The cask ales on offer were, perhaps inevitably, Doombar and Harvey's Best. The Harvey's was drinkable but cost an eye-watering £2.40 for a half.
Walking from the Nevill to its near neighbour the Grenadier did at least take me past West Blatchington windmill and happily the second pub was a considerable improvement. Money has clearly been spent on the Grenadier, and thought given to the layout. It's a long, U-shaped room split up into four separate drinking/eating areas. All have TV screens but they are ignorable. When I walked in you wouldn't have been able to hear the TV in any case. The pub was packed - full of families, all having a whale of a time.
Their only cask ale was Harvey's Best but it was well-kept and a much more sensible price - £1.90 for a half. The Grenadier is not really my kind of pub but I am not part of the market that they're aiming for. The evidence seems clear though - they are hitting their target market right in the bullseye.
I suspect that the Hangleton Manor is also hitting its target market. It has the major advantage, for a pub, of being a beautfully preserved 16th century manor house. As you walk in there is a large, comfortable dining hall to your left, with an impressively eclectic dinner menu. To the right is a long, cosy bar but the beer ... well, it's Hall and Woodhouse. I have been trying to remember when - or if - I have ever drunk a pint of Fursty Ferret or Tanglefoot that was truly memorable. I don't think I have so, whilst I can't fault the cellar work. the beers themselves are just uninspiring.
Lovely building though!
Aldrington
Aldrington is a heavily populated area between Old Shoreham Road and Portland Road. It even has its own station! For what is geographically quite a small area it has a large number of pubs, several of them well worth a visit.
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| The "snug" at the Westbourne |
The pub has two very different bars; the front one is tiny and cosy. In days gone by it would have been called the snug. The large rectangular back bar is usually busy whatever time you go in and although I admit that this is a personal opinion its layout makes it, for me, a hard place to love. The bar is at one end, the serving hatch for the kitchen is along one wall and most of the tables are arranged in refectory-like rows. My theory is that because the staff are so far away from the action this creates an odd disconnect. The result is that although both the beer and the food make the Westbourne worth a visit I find the atmosphere somewhat lacking.
Stay on the same side of Portland Road, walk a further three blocks and you will come to the Three Graces. This is a small one-bar pub that, despite its size, appears to have been designed by two people who had totally opposite views as to what would look good. The result is that one side of the pub has a basic wooden bar and checkerboard patterned flooring while the other has squashy sofas and armchairs facing a large TV screen. There were two cask ales available when I visited and the selections were refreshingly different: Bedlam's Phoenix Ale and Hammerpot Bottle Wreck Porter. I had the Hammerpot and it was excellent.
Right across the road from the Three Graces is a large soulless establishment called the Stoneham, a Brakspears tied house. I can remember a time when Brakspear's Bitter, a nutty, hoppy brew, was one of my favourite beers in the country. Those days are long gone. These days it's a muddy, vaguely malty beer that almost makes me long for a pint of DoomBar. The decor places the emphasis on squashy comfort. It's an enormous space, with plenty of room for a live band. The overall impression though is of a pub that is perfectly acceptable as long as you've been somewhere else first.
If you head up Scott Road, which runs down the side of the Stoneham, skirt around Stoneham Park and keep heading North, you will eventually reach the George Payne. This was the first pub in Hove to get the Zoe Rodgers treatment. I have a vague recollection of coming here in the early noughties when Charita and I first moved to Brighton and a friend of ours lived nearby. It was then called the Kendal Arms and I remember it as a bit of a dive. It isn't now.
This is a pub of a similar size to the Railway Inn in Portslade, another of Zoe's makeovers, and the approach has been much the same, to transform it into a comfortable, family-friendly environment. It's a large, U-shaped room, with the furniture arranged to create both large group spaces and smaller, more intimate corners. I went on Burns Night and I wasn't surprised to see kilts and bagpipes. I also saw a busy, crowded pub with a great atmosphere. There were two cask ales on offer, Bedlam Phoenix and Harveys Best. I went with the Harveys, which was very palatable.
A short walk away is the Ancient Mariner, one of a number of Hove pubs owned by the Laine Pub Co. Several of their pubs have been given what I guess you could call the Hipster Junk Shop look. The Hope and Ruin, in Brighton's Queens Road is perhaps the classic example of this style. The Ancient Mariner does seem to have been spared this approach. What you're left with is a lively, rowdy, single bar pub with a good selection of cask and keg ales. I would normally go for cask - they had Bedlam Phoenix and Dorking Smokestack Lightning - but not when there's a beer from Manchester sour beer specialists, Chorlton Brewing, that I haven't tried. It was their Xmas Pudding Sour, a beer that tastes exactly as you'd imagine from the name. The other kegs included brews from Laine, Magic Rock, Tiny Rebel and Lagunitas.
Keep walking towards Sackville Road and you will come to Zoe Rodgers' second pub. Outside it's called The Poets' Corner but their publicity uses the name Poets' Ale and Smoke House. A two-bar pub, it's the smallest of Zoe's venues but just as busy as the others. The smaller bar had a quieter vibe but the bigger one felt crowded and awkward, as if there was too much furniture for the number of customers. The TV screen was also hard to ignore. This is a Harveys' tied house and when I visited had Best, Old and IPA on cask. The IPA was well-kept but not a brew I'll be in a hurry to try again.
Hove Lagoon and Portslade
The last three pubs in my survey are all at the Portslade end of Not Quite Hove. The Gather Inn overlooks Hove Lagoon and is a bed and breakfast venue. I visited on a Tuesday afternoon and, not surprisingly, it was empty. It was a pleasant space though, showing signs of a recent refurbishment. They have gone for the stripped pine look. There was just one cask ale on offer - Harvey's Best - and it was in decent nick. |
| Amy Winehouse pops into the Garden Bar for a quick one |
If anything they've done too much with it. The walls are painted blood red, there are cheap and tacky looking paintings of famous Brits (see the lazy rendition of Amy Winehouse above), and there are TV screens everywhere. The furniture varies from the smart to the functional but it's hard to see what, if any, style was intended.There was only one handpump in use when I visited. I was slightly surprised to discover that the beer wasn't DoomBar but Harvey's Best. And was it drinkable? Just about.
Blow your Foghorn!
I've saved the best till last though I have to acknowledge the irony of concluding a survey of Hove pubs with one that is actually in Portslade. The reason is quite simple - Boundary Road is in the BN3 postcode. The other side of the road is in BN41. But let's not get hung up on details, let's talk about the Foghorn,
The new micropub is the brainchild of three chums - I guess I can't call them three amigos anymore - Tommy, Niall and Tim, and their pub, in what used to be the Portslade Learning Centre, is a small, square, cosy room with space for around sixty customers. Their beer policy is to have five ales on cask, three on keg and a small selection of bottled and canned beers. Beers are served from a cool room behind the bar. Many of the breweries represented are local - Holler, Downland, Burning Sky, Dark Star, Hand Brew - but they have developed an eye for interesting and less obvious brewers from further afield, such as Squawk, Great Divide and Cromarty.
As a Portslade resident I have found it fascinating to see the clientele build over their first three months of opening. There are already plenty of locals, like me, that have become regulars but it has also been interesting to see how many non-Portsladers turn up to check out the new micropub. Micropubs are still a novelty but they also offer something that many pubs no longer do - a friendly, neighbourly atmosphere and a good range of well-kept beers.
I'll drink to that!
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