I’ve just heard that the Stockport CAMRA Pub of the Year is the Blue Bell, a Sam Smiths house in Levenshulme. This fills me with joy.
Elselwhere, micro pubs and brewery taps mop up the awards, and the bulk of the GBG attention, including yet another Micro Pub in Bramhall.
Bramhall is as posh as Stockport gets, apart from Mudgie Mansions. It must be posh; it’s mere minutes away from Wythenshawe.
I’d never been before, though I used to work with a lad from Bramhall who could only identify the Ladybrook as a proper pub. That one is a Greene King place selling Tetley, Wainwright, and Bombardier. Plus the usual seven guests no–one wants.
In Bramhall itself, apart from from GBG newbie the Mounting Stone, there’s just a food-led Lee’s pub and a keg café recently bullied into selling a lone local beer.
No doubt Bramhall Hall serves Old Tom on gravity, but I wasn’t paying the £5 to go in.
Bramhall Hall Park was full of dog walkers on the first Saturday of 2018. It’s a New Year tradition. Some folk made it all the way from the car park to the café.
I walked back into town through Carr Wood, diverting to make sure I saw some authentic Cheshire on the way. It’s good to see there’s still employment for the thatchers.
I’m no fan of flashy pubs, and the Mounting Stone is no flashy pub. Mind you, Bramhall central is an unflashy suburb, and that’s being kind.
Not an obvious place for a micro, Bramhall. But enough elderly gentlefolk ignoring Dryanuary to keep a micro open in January, a feat in itself.
Being Bramhall, a few miles from the airport, I got banter about airplane crashes. Why do folk think this is acceptable material for conversation. Stick to Mrs Brown’s Boys and Romelu Lukaku, lads.
But the beer was terrific. It could have been a Bollington pub, with a Bollington range and a Bollington glass, which is fine by me. The Best was a solid NBSS 3.5, pulled through to within an inch of its life.
Plenty of space upstairs, even more downstairs (where you could spy on the drinkers above). As is mandatory for a micropub, there is Jenga and Scrabble. I resist the lure of both.
I can’t see the gentlefolk in the Stone making much use of the games either, but then I can’t imagine where they’d drink if they didn’t have the Mounting Stone. Not every bit of South Manchester can have a Sam Smith’s to fall back on.
retiredmartin 
Martin, I agree that Bramhall is poor with regards to pubs but I would like to make some points. The Ladybrook no longer serves the beers you list but does have a few Greene King beers along with several guests that sell very well. It was also Stockport Camra pub of the month recently.
The Lees pub is far from food led and sells more cask beer than most Lees pubs. The beer is always very good, including the bitter which I would have thought you would like as a brown best bitter.
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Thanks, Johm, happy to be corrected, was just raiding WhatPub for info.
It’s a few years since the Ladybrook was in the Guide; I liked it a lot then. I guess there’s a call for decent ale below Davenport,and I should have known it won POTM.
I do indeed like Lees; would like to see a few more Lees pub in the Beer Guide as they’ve been edged out by free houses all over Gtr Manchester in the last decade. Slightly surprised to know a Lees house exists that far south.
Cheers.
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Oh, Lees go well into Cheshire proper, as opposed to in-Cheshire-50-years-ago (eg Boathouse in Chester and Golden Pheasant south of Knutsford) and they’ve been filling some of the territory left behind by the demise of Greenalls etc, they’ve just bought eg the Abbey Arms in Vale Royal.
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That’s interesting, particularly the news they’re still buying. Seen the odd foody place in Crewe, but next to nothing in the Beer Guide, particularly in east Cheshire (compared to Robbies/Marston/PubCo,of course).
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Ale Cry in Bramhall ? Oh dear. I await the CAMRA Central Lancs write up in March.
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The Mounting Stone is run by the same people who have the Chiverton Tap in Cheadle Hulme, which I assume you’ve already visited.
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I have, and I should have said that. Certainly well-kept beer is common, but I suspect both of those pubs have different feel after dark.
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Is this a micro that hits the spot??? 👍
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Not sure. I prefer bigger pubs with young people drinking lager and playing pool, the sort you write so eloquently about. But middle-aged folk seem to prefer these quieter sort of places. Each to their own….
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Surely you are classed as one of these younger people!!
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Compared to most micro pubgoers, I’m positively a baby !
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I would concur with that view!!!
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I still maintain that the word micro, given the size of the downstairs and, more critically if I remember correctly, more than one toilet, shouldn’t apply to Mounting Stone. But it is a lovely place, despite serving pies on slates and not plates.
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But at least it serves pies ! Yes, hardly micro, but I can’t get worked up about labels unless places apply them to themselves in accordance with the “Herne Convention”. Bar is more accurate
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“Stick to Mrs Brown’s Boys and Romelu Lukaku, lads.”
Not sure about the second one but agree with Mrs Brown’s Boys. 😉
“I resist the lure of both.”
Tsk, tsk. I spy a Trivial Pursuit hidden in that lot. 😎
Cheers
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Is that bald bloke getting hammered?
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But will the local CAMRA bods be allowed in to make the POTY presentation, or will that be classed as a club visit and banned by Humphrey?
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