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Telegraph
02-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The English county with the best pubs, according to our expert
There's nowhere to hide at the Coachmakers Arms in Stoke-on-Trent. When I visited recently, I was quickly ushered into the Lounge by the barman with the promise that 'the fire is on'. What he didn't mention was that the room itself was tiny, everyone else knew each other, and I was to be the entertainment for the next hour. Who was I, went the questioning, and what exactly was I doing in Stoke on this rainy Sunday evening? For footballers, a 'cold, rainy night in Stoke' is a famous litmus test of quality; if you can do it there and then, the thinking goes, you can do it anywhere. For pubgoers, the challenge is less onerous – genial questioning rather than a howling gale and a vociferous home crowd – but the rewards for success can be worthwhile. Once I'd revealed I was on the hunt for England's greatest pubs, I was inundated with recommendations for other pubs in Stoke. The Six Towns (Burslem, Fenton, Hanley, Longton, Stoke-upon-Trent and Tunstall), it turns out, are full of good options – but then again, so is Staffordshire as a whole. From Leek to Tamworth, this is a county stuffed with great traditional inns, a county that, I think (and having ummed and ahhed over it, changing my mind half-a-dozen times) is the best in England when it comes to pubs. What it offers is the most reliable blend of the elements that makes a great pub: atmosphere, decor, good beer and a strong sense of place. For the last of these ingredients, you'll struggle to beat Burton-on-Trent, England's greatest historic brewing town, with its trio of very different but equally good pubs: The Coopers Tavern, a historic Bass brewery tap; The Devonshire Arms, delightfully cosy, with gleaming copper-topped tables and untarnished green banquettes; and the Burton Bridge Inn, where the town's brewing tradition still burns bright. For atmosphere, there are the classics in Staffordshire's less well-known spots, from Leek's quirky Blue Mugge to the Anchor Inn by the Shropshire Union Canal. My favourite out-of-the-way Staffordshire pub is perhaps the Brushmakers Arms in Oulton, simple but so welcoming and comfortable. And in terms of decor and beer the Tamworth Tap, twice CAMRA's National Pub of the Year, is unparalleled. This is a micropub that feels like it's been in situ for decades, with one of the country's great pub gardens. Of course, there were plenty of other contenders. Nearby, there's Derbyshire, with its marvellous blend of city pubs and Peak District delights, while the West Midlands, and in particular the Black Country, can match Staffordshire almost blow-for-blow when it comes to atmospheric pubs serving good traditional beer. Kent and Essex have a surfeit of excellent country pubs, and as many as half-a-dozen urban counties – from Bristol to Tyne and Wear – could have carried off the crown. Why is Staffordshire so good? My guess would be that this is a place with a resolutely working-class culture, where the price of a pint remains within most customers' grasp. Squeezed between the West Midlands and the North West, it's not a place that appears to go too big on fads and fleeting fashions, very good news when it comes to pubs. It's also a place that, in Burton, has a brewing tradition that very few other places can match, with the exception of London. But while all of London's great brewing names are now things of the past – remembered, at most, in elderly branded mirrors on pub walls – the drinkers of Staffordshire still cherish Bass, even if the owners of the brand (AB InBev) have only recently woken up to its potential. Nowhere is this more obvious than at the Golden Cup Inn, one of the three Stoke pubs I included in my guide. There are many beautiful pubs in England, but none has quite taken my breath away like the Golden Cup. Recently restored to the tune of £250,000, it has a superb Edwardian green-tiled exterior, decorated with Bass's famous red triangle trademark and with the words 'Bass Only' above the windows. This isn't quite true – there are lots of other beers available inside these days – but it was telling that, when AB InBev decided to put some cash behind the beer in terms of marketing material, beer mats and new pump clips, The Golden Cup was one of the first pubs to get them. If that was all The Golden Cup had, it would be a nice place for beer geeks and history nerds. But when I visited, just before my trip to the Coachmakers, it was full of people, young and old, some enjoying a bank-holiday 'Daytime Disco', most just chatting happily in the pub's plush interior. That's the joy of Staffordshire pubs: they're connected to the past, but still very much alive. They've got the lot, and it's well worth testing yourself on a rainy Stoke evening to enjoy some of them.
The Guardian
04-04-2025
- General
- The Guardian
John Seed obituary
My friend John Seed, who has died aged 74, was an author of poetry and history books and a long-serving lecturer at what is now the University of Roehampton. He was also an associate editor of Social History journal. Among John's eight published collections of poems was That Barrikins (2007), which looked at the lives of London's long-gone working people, including costermongers, ballad sellers, coal heavers, sweepers, bird sellers, seamstresses and slop sellers. It fused history into verse in a way that was characteristic of John's status as a poet-historian. Iain Sinclair praised him for his 'close ear and neurotic sensitivity to the way a line breaks'. Among John's history books were Marx; Guide for the Perplexed (2010) and Dissenting Histories (2008), a study of the writings of religious dissenters in England between the 1690s and the 1790s. John was born in Chester-le-Street in County Durham, the eldest son of Mary (nee Carol), a paediatric nurse, and Alec, a merchant seaman. An altar boy at St Joseph's grammar school in Hebburn, he went on to St Jsoeph's sixth form college in Chester-le-Street, where he met Kathleen McTaff, whom he married in 1974. After studying history and English at Portsmouth Polytechnic (now the University of Portsmouth), John spent a year on the dole living on the island of Lindisfarne in Northumberland, where he spent his time writing and reading. Afterwards he taught history and cultural studies at the Sir Leo Schultz high school in Hull until in 1983 he became a history lecturer at Whitelands College in south-west London and then at the nearby Southlands College, both of which later became part of Roehampton University. He stayed at Southlands for the rest of his career, until retirement in 2010. We first met when John came to read some of his poems at the Six Towns poetry festival, which I founded in Stoke on Trent in 1992. A witty man (the biography he submitted to the Cambridge poetry festival revealed that 'he recently had his hair cut'), he loved an argument, although his discussions were always tempered with empathy. He also liked to walk, and exhorted friends to join his treks across London and the home counties. Kathleen and John had two children, Matthew and Gregory. Matthew, who had acute disabilities, died at the age of 20, and during his life they cared for him day and night. He is survived by Kathleen and Gregory.
