October 2023. Wem. Shrewsbury.
We moved into a third hour in Wem as we approached Pub No. 4.
It’s quite something that Wem (six cask pubs) hadn’t merited a single GBG inclusuion in the quarter of a century I’d been ticking the Guide, and at least three of the houses we visited would have been worthy entries.
These days Black Country Ales pubs seem to be a shoo-in to the Guide, while Joules houses struggle.
The Castle looks like a Guide pub,
and the Castle was the classiest of the half-dozen.
I know Stafford Paul has some reservations about the authenticity of their decor,
and the Castle is hard to distinguish from twenty other Joules houses. With all the house signage and adverts and slogans it’s an at times uneasy cross between a Sam Smiths and Brunning & Price.
But it’s clean, and smart, and comfortable, and the beer is always good (the Pale a cool and rich 3.5),
and the locals were friendly, one of them insisting I took a guided tour of the many rooms.
So what’s the problem ?
I’ve no idea. Perhaps they need ten handpumps rather than four, that should do it.
We spent a good half hour in here, though I did nip out to the Hawkstone, our sixth pub, to check whether it would open in time for us to catch the train. No idea, but I could see what Paul would be entering on Untappd later.
Back at the Castle, Cameo and Dr Hook had given way to Kim Wilde,
and at 3pm on an October Thursday a rural Shropshire local was starting to resemble Wolverhampton on Friday night,
Sort of.
retiredmartin 
I understand Stafford Paul’s reservations about Joules decor but that’s a nice bit of bench seating he’s sat on in your first photo. BTW, he dresses like me. Or I dress like him, one or t’other.
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Great minds…
I think the seating is good, though it’s very similar between pubs.
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Indeed “Stafford Paul has some reservations about the authenticity of their decor” and I’m repeating myself in commenting that I like their beer but not their pubs.
However, the new Joules, like Black Country Ales, the new Davenports, Dorbiere ( four of their forty pubs in Stafford ) and other such companies together make a go of hundreds of pubs that Enterprise or Punch had given up on. It’s easy enough to fault them, and they’re not likely to crop up in any of our ‘top ten pubs’ lists, but they’re useful and comfortable town pubs reassuringly holding the middle ground between the macro barns with their economies of scale and the micropubs that can be opened ‘on the cheap’.
The White Horse was as classy as the Castle and the Albion and the Horse and Jockey were probably the equivalents of the White Lion. We would of course have liked nine pubs for our Proper Day Out but six was better than four.
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Joules pubs seem to have a much more modern take on pub décor than Sam Smiths? The Joules pub in Bridgnorth seemed OK. Sam’s is world of dark wood, maybe they try to style everything using The Angel and White Horse as the template?
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Good analysis, Andy.
It’s the adverts and slightly forced nostalgic look of Joules that I notice more than the woodwork and brickwork. Same as with Brunning & Price but those are much more restaurants.
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As I wrote here when I visited a couple of my student drinking haunts a decade ago, I think the Glebe in Stoke is one of the more sympathetic pub refurbishments carried out by Joules: https://whenmyfeetgothroughthedoor.blogspot.com/2013/07/pottering-about-stoke.html
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Good point, Matthew. Perhaps I’m more sympathetic to the Glebe because it was the first of the revived Joules houses I went in, and is incredibly “pubby”.
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Matthew,
Yes, I’ve mentioned elsewhere that the Glebe, which I first knew pre-Banks’s as a Higsons pub, has had a better refurbishment than the other new Joules pubs I’ve used.
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I show this pic because that building was built from scratch during the last few years using architectural salvage. There’s no reason why pub owners can’t refurbish in like manner, but things like the glazed porcelain “randomised” flooring rather than, say, chequerboard reclaimed quarry tiles give it all away.
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Etu,
Yes, that’s how brickwork and stonework can and should be laid, as I was reminded this lunchtime last month at St Pancras railway station where the recent is virtually indistinguishable from the Victorian.
So why does the new Joules setup use shoddy brickwork such as above the fireplace in Stafford’s Olde Rose and Crown that’s less ‘on the level’ than a bricklaying apprentice would do on their very first day ?
And why so much rough, unplaned timber that would never have been used inside a pub ?
Maybe because many, perhaps most, people don’t mind such a hotchpotch and actually like it.
The friendly locals in Wem certainly did with one of them insisting I took a guided tour of the many rooms a couple of minutes after he took Martin round. I’m not sure if he noticed how underwhelmed I was.
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I don’t remember him offering me a tour, but perhaps I had my forbidding frown on at the time.
Either that or just too busy scoring my Joules Mosaic Pale (NBSS 4). I am not averse to joining in the criticism of their fake interiors, but if the beer is this good I’d be happy to drink in a sloppily refurbished cowshed.
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And weren’t you asked for your money up front ? !!
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