retiredmartin

I like to finish a county’s Beer Guide entries with a good pub, and Nottingham’s Abdication is a cracker.  It’s in Daybrook/Arnold/Nottingham North, depending on your level of geographical pedantry.  I’d never heard of Daybrook.

Two important buildings are nearby.  One is a Premier Inn, that essential for a beer break.  The other is the one now occupied by Notts County Council;

Still a great building, and I keenly await tales of how Alan lost a day on a brewery tour there in 1984.

“Micro-pub” says WhatPub, confidently, and this sweet shop conversion has all the micro hallmarks of cheery landlord, uninhibited conversation, local beers, etc etc  repeat ’til Herne.

But at heart it’s a working man’s pub, and a bit of an instant classic. Very reminiscent of nearby Ilkeston’s Burnt Pig , another multi-roomer with a very local feel and no talk of beer, just life.

The top photo captures the atmosphere best; simple tables with pints of local Nottingham Mild (NBSS 3.5) from 1937 handpumps and good cobs for a quid. Boak & Bailey wrote about a special type of “Ham Roll Pubs” this week. None of that flash nonsense here, just cheese and onion.

I was a bit transfixed, I have to admit, taking in all the memorabilia, including an original employee from the Raleigh factory.

One of the most picturesque pubs I’ve been in in some time, you could imagine this as a rural parlour pub rather than a micro in the industrial suburb of Arnold.

All it needs is Draught Bass from the jug, and it’d be in my Top 10, never mind Top 100.