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ss tops around these are stools with padded dark green leather seats the decor is fairly plain the walls and ceiling are white while the floor is of bare boards in a dark varnish except for a small area in front of the bar which is tiled in a black and white pattern one wall is also tiled this time in dark green but only up to a dado rail above that is a long mirror rather foxed on which an etching representing the pub s name can faintly be made out the bar runs the length of the room with space on all sides the bar top is of dark varnished wood polished to a high gloss the bar front is panelled in a similar dark wood a brass footrail runs along the front of the bar mounted in the tiled area of the floor a wide variety of drinks is dispensed although all four of the handpulled cask ales are from the brewery which owns the pub food options are more limited consisting mainly of cold pork pies served with piccalilli there are also eighteen keg lines dispensing everything from a lemon radler 2 8 3 90 2 3 to a barrel aged chocolate and tonka stout 11 7 50 1 3 because yes i am talking about a a pub i ve visited b in 2026 and c i ll get to c which is odd really i wouldn t claim that the ambience of this pub reproduces george orwell s moon under water his ideal pub apart from anything else some of the details in that essay are decidedly idiosyncratic who now remembers pubs serving roasted onions with a dish of butter to dip them in sort of thing but it feels as if it s in that area certainly quite a few of the things i ve just described scream out old pub how often do you see a dado rail in a new pub all in all you d think it was a really stellar example of preservation and sensitive refurbishment of britain s pub heritage you would think that if you didn t know that i was specifically talking about c a pub that opened in 2023 as a restaurant conversion that is i m talking about north westward ho the central manchester pomona island tap whose site was formerly part of the now defunct chaophraya restaurant ironically that awful name turns out to be the most historically rooted thing about it harking back as it does to the 1970s or in a sense to 1938 the previous licensed premises with that name will have looked and felt nothing like it though what with having six bars full food service a disco every night live sounds for the sophisticated a new orleans jazz band and unspecified traditional music not to mention a dress code bows and ties and an exclamation mark and what with being on board a ship of course the new no exclamation mark north westward ho is by design a different beast and a different beast from the brewery s previous bar the gas lamp or indeed from the average brewery taproom at the time it opened a pomona spox made some interesting comments about the look and feel they were going for we want the space to feel like a pub not a bar and we want all the good things that come with that pub spaces are for anyone places where people come to commune we want it to feel inclusive this will be a sort of a taproom for the brewery but that on its own doesn t really interest us we like a venue with its own identity where everyone s welcome and catered for it won t just look like a bar it will have that feel of a proper boozer something that will hopefully be around for years three points here firstly they wanted it to feel like a pub not a bar or a taproom a proper boozer and secondly a pub that could be around for years you could see fitting out the pub to look as if it had been around for years as a kind of magical bet on an equally long future more pragmatically the great thing about going retro is that it doesn t go out of fashion or rather it does everything does but nowhere near as quickly or obviously as up to the minute styles thirdly the reason why it was important that it was a proper pub even a proper pub created out of nothing with an imaginary past like adam s navel was all the good things that go with that specifically because pub spaces are welcoming and inclusive spaces for anyone pub old inclusive it s not the most obvious combination of ideas isn t an old looking pub by definition an old man s looking pub and hence not inclusive at all but i really think they re on to something apart from anything else in the case of north westward ho i think it works you d think that going all out for old school pub decor would end up looking a bit kitsch and inauthentic but no what you get is just a really nice chilled space as to why it works i ve found that really old buildings whenever i m lucky enough to be surrounded by them have a similar calming effect on me to walking by a river or on a beach there s something slightly magical and genuinely soothing about being able to look around and not see anything that wasn t there long before me i think perhaps retro pub decor has a similar psychological effect or perhaps it s just part of that general mood of small c conservatism that i talked about in this post when you walk into one of those flagship lees pubs the founders hall the pointy dog you re not actually entering a traditional english pub marinated in the near 200 year history of a family brewer but it is a family brewer and the pubs do look pubbish in a way that spoons almost never do more importantly in my experience they do deliver what you want from a pub the pubs do look pubbish and so does north westward ho never mind that those particular decor choices might not pass muster with a pub historian looking for matches with any specific period never mind that the scale of that single room is far larger than would be normal for pub rooms in the 1980s let alone earlier and of course never mind that the beer menu is telling another story entirely another half of only you steve can put out this fire or shall i switch to awaiting the hour of reprisal decisions decisions it looks pubbish intensely unrelievedly pubbish and that looks good it sends the right signals to put it another way it looks nothing like the 2020s no tv screens no fruit machine no menus on the tables unless you count the card advertising pork pies but also no beer blackboard no edison lightbulbs or railway sleeper tables and at this point in the 2020s that s just what we want ps awaiting the hour of reprisal is rather good too if you like west coast ipas they do some hazy stuff as well probably by phil posted in chinstroker drink local going down the pub moon under water comments 0 mild magic divers excursions 26 may 2026 11 30 am this is the fifth in a series of five posts about 2026 s mild magic stockport and south manchester camra s annual celebration of mild covering a few separate trips out macclesfield urmston burnage and er fallowfield my mm trips out have not been the most ambitious this year it s fair to say a pleasant as in fine and sunny but not this damn fine and sunny saturday took us out to macclesfield this was my second visit to the castle and it followed much the same pattern as the first navigate the pub s multiple different rooms on multiple different levels fitted out with old mismatched but comfortable furniture look at the food menu and think about having lunch there another time hear god only knows on the pa and get a bit choked up even on a half of mild wonder about having another then remember all the other pubs we were visiting and move on another time we ll have to do the route the other way round and get there last thornbridge present a coffee mild was unusual and in decent condition our next beer stop was at the picturedrome macclesfield s branch of the mackie mayor empire macclesfield seemed very quiet that saturday but this may have been partly because everyone under 30 was hanging out at the picturedrome it was rather busy and rather loud fantastic decor though more obscure movie posters than you can shake a stick at how genuine they are is another question but they look great the obligatory blackjack brew co bar had blackjack newbarns six mph mild which was really good it s a big rich complex dark mild which could almost pass as a porter that thought having occurred to me i had to follow it with a half of blackjack early days porter although unfortunately i don t remember what my conclusions were more research needed it s not a big place macclesfield and it s surprisingly easy to find yourself not only out of the tourist y bits but right out of the non residential bit or so we found when we took the direct route on the map to the park tavern it had the look of a local pub for local people both from the street and at first glance inside and i was anticipating quite a short stay how wrong you can be it was quiet laid back and welcoming there was no trouble getting a sticker in fact i promptly got into a chat with another drinker about mild magic not only that but bollington bollington nights was in such good nick that i followed it with a half of their ipa eastern nights which was also terrific this was one of the few mild magic pubs that i ve visited for the first time this year and it was a very welcome discovery our final macclesfield stop was the redwillow tap where i continued the dark beer compare and contrast exercise by following redwillow ruby mild with their keg foeder baltic porter i also continued to exercise mindfulness and live in the moment by taking no notes of any kind i can tell you that the ruby mild was really good as it often has been and the porter was colder and had a tighter head it was probably pretty good too as these things go decoration in the gents included a family tree of porter and stout with which i had only minor disagreements decoration in the ladies included a family tree of malt in which my wife took no interest at all married life eh in urmston the lord nelson had joseph holt mild at a reduced price which set off alarm bells i ve had holt s mild in a state i d describe as on life support slack and tired but heavily chilled in a few places before now sadly including the lord nelson last year no need to worry this time it was terrific and the pub was surprisingly welcoming at least it surprised my wife who is always wary of going to old man pubs i think a big part of it is that while it looks a bit tatty on the outside inside the pub s always spotless and the beer is almost always well kept not a soul around at the barking dog perhaps we should visit in the evening quiz night maybe seventeen teams our local quiz had to be called off last night because only two teams had turned out still with this weather anyway dunham massey dark was surprisingly good either i m getting soft in my old age or mild quality s been noticeably better this year the tim bobbin jdw is a case in point they had brightside mmm on marking the first time i d seen it this year and it was nothing short of superb nbss 4 5 all day long under the new rules i guess it would be a 5 or rather an excellent the pub well it was thursday afternoon so it was pretty lively we had a booth it was fine wouldn t much want to work there next door at the prairie schooner there was no mild at all shocker i settled for coley s pub ale rather a nice best bitter type thing and asked for a sticker anyway only to be told quite politely that they weren t doing it this year which of course i d known all along they weren t even in it last year apparently it didn t really go well for them when they did do it they had to pour a lot of mild away shame nice pub i can never go back obviously i d tried to fit the next two which are pubs 46 and 47 of 48 into a couple of different routes but not managed it so they ended up with a route of their own ladybarn social club had brightside mmm in good but not great form i m going to miss being able to score beers 3 5 and nothing much else i fancied they also had the united and forest game if it had been later in the day i would have stopped to watch what with me having been a red or at least a pale pink since primary school days in er carmarthenshire long story but i had somewhere else to be namely reasons to be cheerful where i had thornbridge gold so it does exist even if sightings at wallop have been scarce followed by a keg pale from one of those craft guys kernel possibly it was less cloudy than i d expected anyway and a bag of seabrook s crisps and got into a long conversation about films with some people at the bar who clearly knew each other well and didn t know me at all but weren t bothered it was all very pleasant pub of the day if not week with one sticker left to collect and with business after 5 00 in town i took the scenic route from chorlton to all saints i e i went via fallowfield and the great central the mild was brightside mmm in really good nick albeit not quite hitting the heights of the tim bobbin everyone you can see s got a pint of carlsberg in front of them or a pitcher of something bright blue but the cask mild is superb spoons are weird like that having a bit of time to kill i took some time to find the right place to sit not in full sunlight not too close to people having a loud conversation not at a table piled up with uncleared plates not too close to that scrawny guy in a baseball cap pacing round the pub talking into his phone ok three out of four s not bad the impression didn t improve when i went to the gents and heard what i can only call prolonged snorting noises from a cubicle i m not prejudiced against spoons there are plenty of jdw pubs that i ve never had any problem with but there s a spectrum and the great central is over on the tim bobbin side of it sometimes at least that afternoon certainly the tim bobbin is always on the tim bobbin side by this point i quite fancied a relaxing pint of mild so i fitted in an unscheduled visit to the friendship which was everything the great central wasn t which is to say it was quiet comfortable and clean and as far as i could tell nobody was either dealing illegal drugs or using them i was also surprised to see for the first time out of the five hyde s pubs i ve visited this year hyde s 1863 originally hyde s light mild then renamed and rebadged as a bitter it s now described weirdly as a chestnut session ale as distinct from hyde s original which is a classic amber ale chestnut is a very odd descriptor suggesting as it does a deep brown the brown of theakston s xb for instance which theakston s class as ruby i don t know if hyde s have changed the colour recently or if it was always a shade darker than original certainly it tasted very much as i remembered it it s a light mild and when kept well a good one clearly i should have skipped the great central and got sticker 48 at the friendship one to remember for another time next the sixth post in this series of five by phil posted in camra man crawler drink local love hate relationship with jdw s mild magic very not pale n oppy comments 0 mild magic out of town 18 may 2026 10 42 am this is the fourth in a series of five posts about 2026 s mild magic stockport and south ma...
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