Blog Surfer

Thursday 24 July 2014

#150 The Mitre Inn, Stourbridge, Worcestershire : 1996 to 2013

Apparently, the original Mitre was demolished to make way for some road widening and a picture of the pub from about 1950 can be seen here with a bit more info.

Fast forward to 1996 and this is what it looked like.
Looks almost the same as it did in the 1950's. This was taken on the evening of Monday 27th May 1996 when we did a bit of a pub crawl around Stourbridge town centre. Not a night that lived long in the memory! There were plenty of pubs, but like many town centres they weren't particularly welcoming places and everywhere was quiet, even though it was a Bank Holiday Monday.

From the canal, Stourbridge is accessed from the end of a short arm off the main Stourbridge Canal, so we don't often visit the town centre. We ventured down there again on Wednesday 15th May 2013, this time for a lunch stop. Our first port of call was a remarkably unchanged Mitre Inn.
Inside it was still unwelcoming (not unfriendly, though) as only town pubs can be. From the outside it appeared to be completely unchanged whilst all around it Stourbridge was being reshaped (that's my excuse for not taking a shot from the same perspective as before!)

Perhaps I'm doing the pub a disservice because we caught it on two quiet days. Here is a link to a page that gives a very interesting history of The Mitre with more pictures.

Wednesday 9 July 2014

#149 The Ram's Head, Grappenhall, Cheshire : 1991 to 2013

I've only ever visited Grappenhall twice and we went in The Ram's Head on both occasions.

The first visit was at lunchtime on Monday 22nd July 1991 as part of a trip to take our boat Emma Jane from Wigan to Hemel Hemstead.
I have absolutely no recollection about what the pub was actually like inside!

The next time we stopped at Grappenhall was on our Easter trip from Preston Brook to Manchester (and back) when we made an evening stop on Sunday 31st March 2013.
Unsurprisingly, in the intervening 22 years there have been some changes, but in keeping with the village, they are only superficial. Inside, I was initially quite disappointed as it had (to my eyes) been converted into a restaurant style pub. However, the food was good, the lager flowed well and a pub quiz started a 8:30 so we were well entertained (even though we didn't enter!).

To be honest it isn't as 'pubby' as I would've liked, but in this day and age it ticked the important boxes (beer and food and its still open!) so I can't be too critical. If you're in the area, here's The Ram's Head website for you to browse.