Ben Greshon explores a Berkshire town that’s easy to reach from Oxford by train, stopping at all five of its town centre pubs
I decided to take a short train ride to Bracknell to explore pubs in a town I’d never been to before. It was a one-hour train journey with a change at Reading to reach Bracknell, which in the past has been famous for brickmaking. Today it’s most well-known as part of the UK’s answer to Silicon Valley. Tech firms proliferate.
Bracknell isn’t renowned for its pubs but, as I found on my one-man crawl during that dispiriting time between Christmas and New Year, it’s not a totally lost cause. Two beautiful old pubs that survived the wholesale architectural clearance that followed Bracknell’s designation as a New Town in 1949 are still open as places where you can order a beer; and there’s a particularly fine Wetherspoon. There are only two other pubs in the town centre, a Brewer’s Fayre and a Victorian boozer in front of the station, and these are both of little or no interest.
Exiting the train station, Bracknell immediately presents itself as a town chopped up and subdivided by post-war development. Obstacles such as large buildings (some of them housing those tech firms) and big roads have been thrown in the way to block the natural movement of pedestrians. This makes it hard to get around in a direct way. Navigation around town is negotiated through a network of footpaths, underpasses or along the side of the ring road. The original layout of the town is incomprehensible.
The Old Manor (Wetherspoon) is on the High Street, but you wouldn’t know it. It occupies a sliver of land between the ring road, cutting it off from the town centre, and the A3095, a dual carriageway, and is reached via an underpass and then an access road servicing an industrial unit. Making up for its sorry location, though, it’s a beautiful, listed manor house, dating from the 15th century, and one of the oldest buildings in town. Inside, it’s a wonky, rambling affair, with old beams everywhere. There’s reputedly a large inglenook chimney with a “priest hole” (where a Catholic priest could hide from persecution after Elizabeth I came to the throne) on the first floor, but the public can’t go up there, so I couldn’t verify it.
There was a superb range of ales on tap when I visited: Gower Power (Gower Brewery), Stairway to Heaven (Burton Bridge Brewery), Abbot Ale (Greene King) and the ubiquitous Doom Bar (Sharp’s) and Ruddles Best. There was also Lurcher Stout, from Green Jack Brewery. I opted for a beautifully smooth bitter, Kingstown (Arkell’s), followed by a wonderfully fresh tasting pale ale, She Sells Seashells (Ramsgate Brewery).
My next stop was The Bull, a short walk along the High Street through the central shopping area, which has recently been regenerated at huge cost. This Young’s pub is a listed timber-frame building, originally a hall house, and dates to c1400. That makes it perhaps Bracknell’s oldest surviving structure. It sticks out like a sore thumb among the newness surrounding it, a genuinely surreal sight. It’s very smart, renovated to within an inch of its life (so much so that it almost looks fake).
It’s a pub that seems proud of its heritage. There’s a self-consciously up-market ambience. It was packed full of young families and small groups of 20- and 30-somethings eating tasty-looking food. There’s a heavy emphasis on wine and dining, and there were only two ales on tap: Young’s London Original and Hogsback’s Tongham Tea. I opted for the former, which was satisfyingly well-kept.
Before I left, I checked out the incredible bubble-like added space at the back, which blends seamlessly with the fabric of the old pub, all in wood and earthy colours. It too was packed full of lunchtime diners. Whatever it has been in the past, The Bull today is not a pub for boozing.
My next port of call was Blue’s Smokehouse. This is another old building, a 16th century listed inn, originally with stables, and was until recently The Red Lion. This Blue’s Smokehouse is all that’s left of a small chain (there used to be branches in Southampton and Newbury). It styles itself as a “casual, US-style barbecue restaurant with booth seating, specialising in ribs, chicken and burgers”. When I visited it was fairly busy with families and groups eating food.
It’s not really a pub anymore, though it still has something of the look of one, and at least they let me sit at the bar (I didn’t want to go into one of those booths on my own) and not order food. There were no ales on hand pump, and I settled for a Neck Oil (£6 a pint). Neck Oil seems to be everywhere these days. They offer Blue Light and student discounts. How long will this place last, I wondered?
My next stop was Weather Vane (Brewers Fayre), which, still on the old main drag but across a dual carriageway, mirrors the location of the Wetherspoon, but on the other side of town. Reached via an underpass traversing a giant roundabout, and through a car park serving a Premier Inn and some industrial units, it’s not an appealing place for the pubgoer or ale drinker. A few families were eating a late lunch on my visit. The only real ale they had on was Doom Bar, which tasted exactly as expected. I drank it quickly and beat a hasty retreat back towards the station.
My final pub of the day was the Market Inn, a Victorian era station pub. Apart from the Wetherspoon, it’s the only real boozer in town. There were no real ales when I visited but there were lots of taps with the labels all facing away, suggesting that there have been ales here at one time or another. It was a friendly place, and I again settled for a pint of Neck Oil (cheaper here than at Blues Smokehouse).
And that concluded my visit to Bracknell. It has to be said, there’s not much here for real ale drinkers. It’s a shame when a town can’t offer a better pub than a Wetherspoon. However, whilst nothing here is worth going out of your way for, if you’re in town it’s well worth paying a visit to the ‘Spoons. Although it was a privilege to drink in buildings as old as the next two pubs I went to, it was the highlight of my day.
It should be noted that there are other pubs in town, including the Bridge (Greene King) to the west; the Downshire Arms (Beefeater) to the south-west; the Boot, the Royal Oak and the Running Horse to the east; and the Horse & Groom (Harvester) to the south; but these are all a fair walk from the centre, and I didn’t pay them a visit.