A journey into Middle England – Part 1

Atherstone is a market town in North Warwickshire with a population of about 11,000, located between Coventry and Burton-on-Trent, very close to the geographical centre of England. The only time it will enter into most people’s consciousness is when they speed through it at 100 mph on an express train between the North-West and London Euston, and may just notice the station sign. Some may have driven past it on the A5, but it was bypassed as early as 1955, so few will have actually ventured into the town itself.

So why choose it for a pub trip? Well, it’s easily accessible by train from Stockport, and indeed many other parts of the country, it’s always interesting to visit a town that I have never even set foot in before, and it has a collection of unselfconscious, unspoilt-by-progress pubs that ended up providing a very enjoyable day out.

The train journey from Stockport takes about an hour and a half, changing at Stafford, and today everything ran to time on a beautiful sunny Autumn day. Approaching Atherstone, you see the slightly sinister-looking landmark tower of the Victorian mansion Merevale Hall, situated on a spur of the hills southwest of the town.

Our meeting place and first stop was the King’s Head, located round the back of the station on a stub of the former A5, accessed by a remarkably low bridge under the mainline railway with a headroom of only 6’3”, which might trouble some taller humans. This is a chalet-style 20th century pub now mainly concentrating on food, but with a pleasant interior and plenty of comfortable seating. The sole cask beer was Taylor’s Landlord, which was in pretty good nick.

From here, there was a very pleasant ten-minute walk up five locks of the Coventry Canal, offering a surprisingly bucolic location given how close it is to the town centre. Our next pub stop was the Maid of the Mill, located next to a derelict factory building situated by the canal bridge. Outwardly, it has an unassuming two-bay frontage, but inside is surprisingly spacious, with two areas of comfortable seating on either side of the central door, and a section with a pool table extending to the rear. Cask ales were Bass, Old Speckled Hen and Abbot Ale. Most of us plumped for the Bass, which was good, although not quite scaling the heights. The pub had a sign instructing customers not to bring in products from the nearby chip shop. We met an 86-year-old regular enjoying his pint of Bass with whisky chaser whom a couple of the party had encountered on previous visits.

Heading north, we returned to Long Street, the former course of the A5, which runs ruler-straight through the centre of the town. The heavy traffic must have been a great annoyance to the townspeople before the bypass was constructed. A short walk east brought us to the White Horse, our scheduled lunch stop. This has a fairly unassuming frontage, but in fact goes a long way back, with a conventional pub-type area at the front and an extended dining section at the rear. Cask beers were Bass, Butty Bach and Oakham Citra. Again most chose the Bass, which was good but not outstanding (probably NBSS 3 on the CAMRA scoring system).

There is an extensive and varied menu of pub food, and it is one of the few places in the town catering for diners. However, it has to be said that the service was distinctly slow, taking around half an hour between placing orders and the dishes actually appearing. I ordered a lamb kofta on flatbread, where I was told they would have to substitute naan bread, which turned out to be overcooked and rock-hard. Those who opted for fish and chips or fishcakes seemed to be better served.

The delays with the food meant we were maybe half an hour behind schedule as we moved on the next pub, the Old Swan, the furthest east along Long Street we would go today. This is a striking 16th-century half-timbered building, probably the oldest pub in town, with an unspoilt interior that merits a two-star entry on CAMRA’s National Inventory (photo from the CAMRA website). Apparently it was remodelled in 1962, but scarcely changed since then, comprising a long front bar, a small separate snug to the right and a cosy lounge at the rear with extensive bench seating.

We found a congenial spot in the lounge. It’s a Marston’s tied house, and the cask ales available were Pedigree and Banks’s (Amber) Bitter. The barmaid warned that Pedigree was about at the end of the barrel, and so it proved, although it was willingly changed for Banks’s. Now brewed at Burton and reduced to 3.4% ABV this, while pleasant enough, is sadly now a shadow of its former self.

To be continued…