The Brighton Public House

The Pint lives on: Brighton Public Houses to Continue serving the Pint

Yes Brighton's Pubs will now be able to serve the pint - for ever! It's official. The beaurocrats in Brussels have at last relented and promised to stop tinkering with our traditional measures. Long live the pint of ale! Let's all celebrate with a visit to our favourite Brighton pub.

It's probably the Brighton public house which typifies the Brighton experience for many people. However, they'll all have their own take on what a Brighton public house is, as there's such an enormous variety of pubs among the many hundreds of pubs to be found in the town. If you've always felt that the location of a pub gives you an idea of what you might find when you step into one then you should be wary of accepting this as a hard-and-fast rule. you'll need to be prepared for surprises as, when you walk through the door of a Brighton public house, you just don't know what you could find! True enough, many Brighton pubs are just bog-standard English alehouses but some are not and they're the interesting ones.

Within the city, there's every conceivable shape and size of watering hole and they have all sorts of history behind them. Some may once have been someone's front room which was transformed, some were once places of churches and many, often the most recent ones are large modern theme pubs, crammed chock-full of every electronic gizmo that one could imagine.

It's up to you what criteria you use to judge a pub but, it's almost certain that you can find exactly what what you're looking for somewhere in Brighton. Given the scale of the task of finding the ideal bar to lean on, it may be easier to identify what you don't fancy, rather than choosing what you do!

There's lots of different identities which the modern pub attempts to adopt, such as the Irish theme! Chances are, you'll either love it or hate it – especially when much of it is just fake Irish ambiance? ...or then there's sport. Is a BIG screen the sign to drop all your inhibitions as it flickers into life or does the very imagining of it bring you out in a cold sweat? ... and those children? Do you love them – but only when they're well tucked up in bed? Are you with the more-veteran pub goers and judge a pub by its toilets – if so, yes, Brighton does have some pretty gross loos in its pubs!

The Brighton public house – or certainly some of them - have followed the general trend in the UK and transformed themselves from their spit and sawdust past towards more refined eating places which also serves beer and wine. Certainly, some have moveded further down this path than others – and there's a few which have yet to set off on the journey - but the progress so far does ensure that you can find everything in a Brighton pub from a dried-up burger to a sumptuous feast fit for The Prince Regent himself.

The historic Brighton public house also has its a place in the city and both within the town and its surrounding area there are hostelries which exude a rich historic ambiance. OK, there's also the fake ones but its normally pretty simple to pick these out from the real thing.

What you'll need to do is a bit of research, an hour or two supping in different alehouses and you''re sure to find your perfect Brighton public house.

Pubs with Local Colour – and Not-so-Local colour!

All pubs everywhere in the UK are part of the local scene and that's equally true of the Brighton public house. Some, like The Hikers Rest in Kemp Coldean Lane set out to achieve this by decorating its walls with photos of the town. Others such as the I Go Inn, celebrate their local connection with both the town and the sea. Being located in Kemp Town, it is close to the Brighton Marina and emphasises this proximity by offering fishing trips for its customers who book in for bed and breakfast. these are arranged with local skippers and, if you have a good day and bring back a useful catch for the restaurant will cook this for your evening meal.

The not-so-local colour in The Walkabout Bar in West St enables you to enjoy tinnie with a chinwag. This Australian flavour is, as you would expect, accompanied by lots of sport. Aussie tipple is also to be sunk at The Cobblers Thumb in New England Rd.

Brighton's Historic Pubs

You'd be surprised not to find historic pubs in such an old town as Brighton and the town will delight you with its ancient alehouses. Said to be the oldest, The Cricketers on Black Lion St. in The Lanes occupies a site there has been a pub standing since 1547. Among its most-famous residents it listsJack the Ripper and its very-first landlord, Derrick Carver who was burnt at the stake for his holding the wrong religious beliefs at the time. Like many other Brighton pubs it has a function room – The Greene Room – which is available to all lettings. Its main claim to fame is that it was immortalised in Graham Green's famous novel 'Brighton rock'. Yet another old hostelry, The King and Queen, in Marlborough Place is to be found on the Old Steine, in an enormous historic building. A more modern look, dating back only to the 1930's is to be found in the Ladies Mile in Mackie Avenue (Patcham) and this still contains many original features from that period.

Music

Many Brighton Public houses offer live music and some, like The Albert, on Trafalgar St., keep a room in which is to be heard regularly. Live music is more-commonly to be found at the weekends, when it is offered in pubs such as the Beachcomber (The Kings Road Arches) - on Fridays and Saturdays – and The Connaught, (Hove St., in Hove) on Fridays. Some pubs, such as The Pelham Arms in Western Rd. (Lewes) choose to base their live music offering around themes and theme nights such as these attract their own regular crowd while other pubs such as the Preston Park Tavern in Havelock Rd provide live music and discos.

There's every type of music to be heard around Brighton with folk music drifting from The Bugle, on St. Martyn's St on a warm summer evening, while if it's future indie stars you're looking for, the newly-refurbished Free Butt, in Phoenix Place, can provide some new faces. The King and Queen in Marlborough Place (at the Old Steine) provide jazz on Wednesday evenings, and Sunday lunchtimes but, if acoustic's your scene, go along to Mr Deeds (Sussex St.) on Thursday evenings you'll be free to test the open mic.

Other pubs such as The Burlington on George St., use DJ's to deliver their musical backdrop and Karaoke is simply everywhere around. While it's not to everyone's taste - karaoke - it can sometimes be a little difficult to escape from. Nevertheless, if one of your aims is to step up and give an unforgetable performance, you'll find no difficulty in locating a pub stage from which to strut your stuff.

If you'd just rather join in the choruses then The Marquess of Exeter might well be the place to go. There, they lay on singsongs on Friday and Saturday nights, and you can go along to sing your socks off, feeling confident that you and only you will hear your offering as the rest of the chorus cover your efforts! Friday nights are also the night for music at The Northern Tavern on Ditchling Rd.

Sports

Sports may just mean the Premier League on Big Screen for many people but the Brighton Public House can offer quite a bit more than that! For instance, The Cobden Arms on Cobden Rd offers Pool, Darts and Cribbage League on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays respectively and, at the Preston Park Tavern there are ladies and men's darts teams and as pool and football teams. If you're more into the horse-racing scene, then the The Winner in Elm St. (right next to the racecourse) could be just your place. With its special offers on race-days, there's always a warm welcome for the punter. The fact does remain, though, for the majority of pubs, sports coverage means the big screen and the almost-inevitable wall-to-wall football.

Food

The greatest number of pubs now offer a lot more than a packet of crisps with your pint -it seems to be an inevitable trend which can only be welcomed. Many pub landlords and landladies seem to want to go much further than expanding from the bag of crisps to a ham sandwich and some currently have a bit of an identity crisis and just can't decide whether they want to be a pub or a restaurant. One pub which is just like this – in the nicest possible way of course(!) is The Crown and Anchor on Preston Rd. and its latest refurbishment generates a restaurant ambiance mixed with that of a pub . Lots of other pubs, however, remain happy to be a Brighton public house which offers high-quality food and pubs such as The Pelham Arms in Western Rd. (Lewes) succeed in delivering a varied menu which they change regularly. The barbecuee offers another slant on the food offered and pubs such as Dave and Sue's Bar in Fulmer Close have a large garden in which they can offer barbecues when the weather allows.

Another British tradition, the Sunday roasts is followed in a large number of Brighton pubs, some of those offering these include The Park View Tavern in Preston Drove, The Railway Hotel in Ditchling Rise, The Rock in Rock St. and the Queen Vic in Richmond Road. If you have a more Mediterranean taste (or should that read American?) and it's pizzas which tickle your taste buds then The Red Lion in Hove Place (Hove) might well be to your taste. For what many consider to be the best value in pub food, you'd need to visit The Winner in Elm St. where the landlord provides hot food for free every Monday and Tuesday evenings and Sundays.

Not surprisingly, Veggies don't go unloved in Brighton as a number of pubs offer vegetarian and vegan food and some, like the The George on Trafalgar St. have gained a number of awards for their excellent cuisine.

Children

There's lots of Brighton public houses which welcome children and some set an evening limit after which the little darlings are expected to have left the pub and be out of sight and safely in bed. In some pubs, like The Jolly Sportsman in Chapel lane (East Chiltington) they have a large garden which is equipped with a variety of children's play equipment.

Pubs with Accommodation

There's a few Brighton public houses which offer bed and breakfast for their customers and The Blue Lagoon, on Kingsway (Hove), is ideally located on the beach front, and overlooks The lagoon, has fourteen rooms available for those who want to stay after the other punters left. Brighton bed and breakfast is offered by the I Go Inn which is located near the Marina and The Ship Hotel in Hove St. (Hove)