Wolverhampton
This is not something you are supposed to admit, but I generally enjoy my visits to Wolverhampton. I like the place. It's a proper footballing town (city these days) and although bigger than Burnley, there are similarities: the football club, a grand old institution, puts it on the map and brings national recognition, but arguably there's not much else going on. And, rather like Burnley, even though it's "an unattractive mix of Victorian civic architecture and hideous 1960s shopping malls," (according to the Rough Guide to Britain), there are some basic drinking pleasures to be had.
Of course, fans are as passionate as Burnley, which naturally demands caution. If you were an away supporter in Burnley you'd take care, wouldn't you? There are horror stories about visiting Wolves, including an alleged danger of being 'ambushed', but I can only go off what I've seen, and so must report that on four visits, I've avoided trouble. It's certainly not a place to draw attention to yourself by wearing a Burnley shirt, and it's sometimes necessary to keep your head down, your mouth shut and move swiftly, but then, you could say the same about East London, and I live there. I therefore strike a note of due caution in recommending the below pubs, even if personal experience does not demand it.
Here's a curious thing, though. On my first two visits to Wolverhampton, first on a Friday night, and then on a Saturday afternoon, I roamed freely around the town centre pubs. Sure, sometimes I had to keep a low profile to beat a doorman, but I got in everywhere I wanted and had as much to drink as I fancied. But for the next visit, on a Sunday afternoon in October 2001, Wolverhampton was shut. All the town centre pubs I list below, all visited by me on previous occasions, were closed. It seems a blanket closed door policy had been imposed ahead of our visit. One assumes the never football-friendly West Midlands police were involved. Charging desperately from one shut pub to another was not much fun, and we ended up not having enough to drink before the game. Fortunately the team capitulated 3-0 in the first half, allowing our dedicated research team to apply the Three Goal Rule and investigate several further pubs close to the ground. I did feel guilty at the thought of anyone who might have followed the earlier version of this guide, thirsty at its promises of great drinking in the town centre. If that was you, sorry. For future visits, it's another potential problem to bear in mind, and I might be tempted to say next time that, if I found myself drinking in a good pub that was open, I'd stay there.
If you only go to one pub...
That good pub could well be the Great Western, on Sun Street just behind the station. In fact, it's a better than good pub; it's a great pub, exactly the sort of jam-packed, down-to-earth, quality drinking den you hope to find. It sells great beer, and it's packed when Wolves play. Okay, so it's packed with Wolves fans, but I've found it to be a friendly enough establishment on my visits, with some familiar Burnley faces enjoying a quiet pint or several. Wolves and railway memorabilia adorn the walls, and it's quite a large pub, although that doesn't stop it getting crowded. However, service is always no-nonsense, fast and efficient.
The Great Western is, perhaps uniquely, recommended by all trusted sources. Best of all, the beer is splendid. As a West Midlands source says, "The Great Western serves as good a pint of Holden's as I've tasted and as I used to live in Dudley I've tasted a few. It also does cheap and substantial lunches although the choice is limited." It certainly is. Food is chip and sandwich oriented, but it's fast, in fact almost instant. Anything with pork in is recommended, as this is, of course, pork-eating country. Get yourself two pork rolls - one for now, and one for the journey home.
I'm ashamed to say, but we once got into trouble for pinching our glasses from the Great Western, after that mystifying Friday night match in the 1994/95 season. We were young and foolish, but more to the point we had our drinks to finish and a train to catch, so we decided to take them with us to sip on the way. Bad move. Two bored cops prowling streets bereft of after match trouble made a meal of us. They stopped their van and climbed out. "I don't know about where you come from, but round here we leave our glasses in the pubs." West Midlands accents are amongst the very best for conveying sarcasm. There were several more minutes of this, culminating in the other copper concluding, "Leave them alone, they're Burnley supporters, they've had a bad enough night." The sad thing is, we readily agreed with him. We had.
Anyway, to get to the Great Western, you need to take the urine-smelling underpass under the station. Come out of the station, turn right and close to the cab rank is the narrow tunnel you require. It's unprepossessing, and it emerges next to the depressing derelict remains of what was Wolverhampton lower level station, which nature is now re-colonising. On your right as you emerge into these unappealing surroundings, the large building standing isolated is the Great Western.
The beer choice
The beer on offer in the Great Western, Holden's, is a Dudley-based brewery that produces excellent Black Country Mild and Black Country Bitter, both available here, and also an occasional real stout, which will have to be tried if found. My source adds, "All in all I think I would plump for the Great Western. After all it seems a waste for people from outside the area to come to the Black Country and not drink Holden's. You can get Banks's anywhere!"
As it happens, I rather like Banks's. This large regional brewer, based in Wolverhampton, is a dominant force in the West Midlands, and one gets the impression that local people are a bit tired of their ubiquity, but their products are rare enough in London to make them a bit of a novelty for me. Banks's pubs generally sell Banks's Bitter and Banks's Original, supplemented perhaps by Marston's Pedigree or Cameron's Strongarm. Banks's Original is their top seller and is actually a mild, except that, although people drink mild in these parts, they fear that if they call it mild no one will buy it, so Original it is. Regardless of what you want to call it, it's a top pint, easily preferable to the bitter. You will not go drinking around Wolverhampton without having a pint of it at some stage. The brewery's not far from the football club, and their website's at www.fullpint.co.uk.
Apart from that, you may come across some big brewery M+B Bitter. This is unspeakably bad. Avoid it. You may also get Ansell's mild, which is fair, but you'd be far happier if you come across the products of Walsall's Highgate Brewery, whose Highgate Dark (mild) is rightly well known. Batham's, another local brewery, produces an excellent bitter, complex and very bitter. The Great Western also sell Batham's Bitter, so you're spoilt for choice there. Best stop and have a few.
Around the centre
There's nothing else around here, so you're likely to do the rest of your drinking in the town centre - if open. It's dominated by chain pubs, but some of these aren't too bad, as chain pubs often adapt to the character of their surroundings. Essentially, the geography is that the ground is just north of the town centre, separated from it by the ring road, while the station is to the north east, again close by the ring road. It isn't far, and you can see the gleaming structure of the ground from the station platform. The route is basically a circle around the ring road via some complicated bridge and path arrangement. I recall the bridge in particular from our first visit, on a dark night, striking me as an ominous bottleneck. This was one place not to dawdle. I also recall that on the streets behind the station there were one or two prostitutes plying their dubious wares.
One to avoid, according to a Midlands-based stalwart of the Clarets Mad message board, is a pub close to the station, the Prince Albert. The local yobs apparently hang out here and away fans will not be welcomed.
Anyway, for the town centre, come out of the station and cross over onto Lichfield Street. It's straight on. On this stretch you get the Moon Under Water - yes, a Wetherspoon's - and when you come to Princess Street, you can turn left for the Tap and Spile or right for the Hogshead on Stafford Street. Straight ahead of you there's the Feline and Firkin, which needn't detain us (and which may well have changed its name - how dismal it must be to be a feline in a town full of wolves), and there's also one of those Varsity pubs somewhere around here, but if you carry on down Lichfield Street you come to the Posada on your left. If you continue until you come to Exchange Street on your right, then down onto Cheapside, where you'll find the Exchange Vaults. My West Midlands researcher recommends the Posada and, to a lesser extent, the Tap and Spile. Bear in mind that, because they were all shut in October 2001 and because I drank elsewhere in August 2002 - of which more later - I haven't investigated any of these since August 2000, so places may have changed.
I don't know what the Moon Under Water is like, because I've not been in there. However, I know what it's like because it's a Wetherspoon's pub, so it'll be like so many other Wetherspoon's pubs. They couldn't even be bothered to think of a decent name. Still, although I've not had time to call in, it has been open in the past, and as a handy pub for the station, it's worth knowing about.
The Hogshead wasn't my kind of place. The sign on the door stating that the pub was for home fans only and away fans wouldn't be served wasn't the warmest of welcomes. Not that this deters us. We simply push someone with a neutral accent to the bar. Inside it was the typical modern Hogshead interior, lots of pastels and wood, staffed by disinterested students. Although it was probably early by most people's standards - around noon - this was an empty pub. That said, the beer selection was excellent. This wasn't the uninspired big brewery range we've become used to. Beers came from small, independent brewers and my pint was fine. Given that, it's probably worth calling in for one as it's handy, but you'll probably not get served if you're wearing colours. When we left not long after twelve bouncers had appeared on the door. Visit early for the beer, if not the ambience.
Compared to this, the Tap and Spile was like a real pub. It was crowded and authentically grubby and smoky. There were a few Wolves shirts around, but although it was clear where we had come from, no one seemed too worried about it. There looked to be a decent beer selection on, and the Banks's was fine.
I have hazy memories of visiting the whatever it is and Firkin in 1995 when I was younger and more clueless, but all these places are the bloody same and there's no point visiting a sub-Wetherspoon's when there's a real one five minutes away. It was busy that night and, like other anonymous chain pubs not mentioned here, it had men on doors.
The Posada is apparently a shadow of what it once was, but it still had more character than most Wolves central pubs. It would be quite possible to walk past it, but look out for a nice old fashioned chunky window, of the kind shops always have on Dickensian Christmas cards. There's also an attractive little tiled room behind the bar. Beer selection was odd. Although the window advertised beer from the now defunct Holt, Plant and Deakin wing of Tetley, the choice on our visit was Greene King Abbott and Tetley Bitter or Dark Mild, covering a nice range of alcoholic strengths at least. It has to be said the dark mild was excellent. The pub was quiet and seedy, with few football shirts of any colour in evidence.
We visited the Exchange Vaults on Cheapside after the match in August 2000. It was busy, with people drinking on the pedestrianised area around the civic centre outside. I found it a fairly uninspiring place, essentially just a big shed in which people drink beer. That said, there was nothing wrong with my Banks's. It's easy to miss - we walked past it originally - because its name was only in small letters on the signs, with the words 'Tap House' for some reason much more prominent.
I tried to get into the Wheatsheaf on Market Street on the October 2001 visit, but that too was closed. I'm told it's a basic Banks's pub. I think we walked past one of those Litten Tree places, which was open, but this was before we realised the full extent of our problem, or we might have ventured in.
On the outskirts
So disenchanted did we become that day with the town centre that we ended up having to wander further afield. At one point we got rather lost and drifted into a terrible estate pub called the Red Fort, where the EastEnders omnibus seemed to be the primary source of Sunday entertainment.
We pressed swiftly on to the Stafford Arms on Lime Street. I hadn't rated this pub on an earlier visit, but this time it didn't seem so bad. A case of any port in a storm, perhaps. It still looked closed from the outside, and was still somewhat 'homely' inside. Perhaps it's a bit basic, even for my taste, an opinion which the toilets evidently share - they're outside. Still the beer was Banks's, albeit on electric pump. It was the real stuff - always confuses people, because we tend to associate hand pumps with real beer and electric pumps with rubbish - but somehow it never feels the same as a pint pulled the proper way. What natives were there were friendly, and a Wolverhampton-based Preston fan - of all things - wished us well.
If you're here you're nowhere near the ground - shut pubs in the centre had blown us badly off course - but if you head north you'll hit Merridale Road, which takes you in something more like the right direction. The Chindit on here is a pretty decent pub, with a small front room and a larger back room. It sold some good guest beers.
One time we carried on from here along Compton Road, where you'll find the Quarterhouse and the Royal Oak. It's been a while, but I remember both of these as being bog standard Banks's pubs like hundreds of others, the second somewhat studenty. Beer was probably pretty decent, although by this stage, who could say? The Wolves shirt count went up as we progressed along here, indicating we were at least getting nearer to the ground. A walk to the end takes you to Chapel Ash and onto the ring road, from which point you follow the hordes to the ground.
Closer to the ground
There are a couple more pretty good pubs on Chapel Ash, although it's hard to say what they'd be like before the match. I went in during, after making that exit at half time. In fact, I walked past the Combemere Arms on the way to the ground and it was mobbed. During the second half, however, it was very quiet, perhaps too quiet for us. There was a mostly genteel crowd drinking in here and out in the beer garden. Still, it's a very pleasant pub in a nice old building. The Hanson's mild - get it where you can - was excellent, too. And there really is a tree growing in the middle of the gents.
The Clarendon Hotel, close to the Banks's brewery, was a big, grand old pub with lots of room inside. We were in here as the match ended, and it started filling with home fans shortly after.
As for drinking near Molineux, best advice is to forget it. As in Burnley, pubs close to the ground really should be regarded as home only. And like in Burnley, those without colours still look suspicious; as most of the home fans wear the shirts, you will be taken for an away fan. Sources tend to suggest drivers drink on the outskirts, with pubs on the A449 from the north and the A4123 from the south.
I have been in one pub near the ground. Oh dear. When we applied the Three Goal Rule, we decided to call in at the Feathers on Molineux Street. This was, once, briefly, in the CAMRA Good Beer Guide, but I had never called in as, being right outside the John Ireland Stand, it was always packed before and after the game. Never again. We couldn't figure out what all the scary blokes in Wolves shirts were doing hanging around and telling us that 'the shit are getting beat 3-0'. Then we realised they were probably the people banned from the ground. We drank our pint swiftly and quietly. The Banks's wasn't any good either. Why did we not remember one of the golden rules? Pubs near football grounds are never any good.
Further afield
An intriguing additional drinking option if you've been to Wolverhampton before and are looking for somewhere a bit different is offered by the nearby town of Bilston. This is on the tram route from Birmingham to Wolverhampton. Bilston, once upon a time a major steel town, does have a local reputation for being somewhat like the wild west, and it's certainly a working class town. But on a visit in August 2002, having decided not to chance being shut out of pubs in central Wolverhampton again, we alighted at Bilston Central and found two excellent pubs.
The Trumpet, on the High Street, is a really nice pub. It looks a bit unpromising from the outside, but don't walk past. Go in. True, they're very into jazz, but don't let that put you off either. On my visit they were hosting a jazz festival in a marquee out the back of the pub. A trip to the gents, also out at the back, revealed someone playing a large white instrument that looked like an elongated polo mint wrapped around his head. Lord knows. The seating arrangement, with seats around the edge of the room and lots of space in the centre, gives away the fact that bands often perform inside as well. They have a nice wooden bar and wooden ceiling, the latter reminiscent of the legendary Lamb on Lamb's Conduit Street in London. The walls are plastered with musical memorabilia - not entirely jazz-oriented, as the substantial presence of Slade proves. An early 1990s Reading Festival flyer promising Pixies and the Fall made me feel my age. There are great photos from Mike Reid's 'Pop Quiz' too. Meanwhile, to emphasise the motif, trumpets hang from the ceiling. Of course, the beer's important, and fortunately it's excellent. This place sells what must be the full Holden's range, including their splendid Black Country Mild, at bloody cheap prices. The mild was first rate on my visit. This is definitely a place to linger over a couple in.
Just across the road is a Wetherspoon's pub, the Sir Henry Newbolt, if you're interested.
Meanwhile, around the corner on Lichfield Street, the only thing wrong with the Olde White Rose is its Yorkist name. This is a long, narrow and old-looking pub. Inside on offer was a vast range of changing beers. Details were on the blackboard. Curiously, one half of the bar was cluttered with hand pumps while the other half gave a pointless choice of smooth shite. Of the many beers available, lord knows what I was drinking, but it was good. There was a nice range of strengths on offer, although my one slight quibble is that given the range, and given their location in a mild-drinking area, they could have had one dark beer for sale. The pub was busy on a Saturday lunchtime, doubtless because they also do basic, cheap and fast food. CAMRA members got a discount on beer if they showed their card!
There seemed to be a plentiful supply of basic Banks's pubs around town too, but alas there was not time to investigate.
And so to Molineux
Away supporters are housed in the John Ireland lower, the bottom tier of a side stand. Home fans occupy the upper tier. This is actually the oldest part of the ground, built in the 1970s. The cost of this was one of the reasons why the club went into a nosedive, and for a long time it looked out of place in a shabby ground. Now the rest of the ground has caught up. It positively gleams golden, and while they don't so much have big screens in the corners as lots of small screens stuck together, instant replays of match incidents are a bit of an eye opener when you've been more used to the Allotment End at Cambridge. This is a proper football ground. You can even get a chicken balti pie.
Unfortunately, the fact that away supporters are stuck in a long narrow strip down the side makes it hard to get an atmosphere going, compared to that generated by Wolves. (I note with regret the passing of 'The Liquidator', a legendary tune which used to be played before their games. I understand it was dispensed with when repeated pleas to refrain from colourfully abusing West Brom in time to the music were not heeded.) The fact that Molineux is a Burnley graveyard - they always beat us - makes it harder still to generate support of the preferred volume.
Still, if you've been to all the pubs listed above, I don't suppose you'll be that bothered.
Firmo
With thanks to Peter Bateman and 'Claretextile'
Last visited August 2002
Last updated October 2003
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