THE JOY OF BURGESS HILL SPOONS

December 2025. Burgess Hill. West Sussex

Ah, Bucolic Burgess Hill.

I’d been before, just the once, when Quench got in the GBG over a decade ago. Even Harvey’s can’t keep Quench in the Guide, replaced by a craft bar and a Spoons.

Which might make you think that Burgess Hill is worthy of a detour from Lewes.

It’s not.

But not because of any fault of the Six Gold Martlets (something to do with Jason and the Argonauts, I think). CAMRA’s Discourse is in a ferment at the moment over the merits of JD Wetherspoon.

15 positive things about Spoons there, all of which I agree with, but they’re just not very comfortable, are they ?

Give me the Hat and Beaver in Atherstone any day.

But the GBG isn’t about comfort, and I reckon the cask quality is up a notch of late,

with that Burning Sky Dignified & Old a cool, chewy 3.5+.

“Enjoy” says the nice lady, and the staff are the best thing about the Six Gold Martlets.

That, and the prices. £2.25 for a quality 5.4% Old Ale. It would have been £1.75, but I’ve lost my Spoons voucher so I ordered it as part of a meal like Mudgie would, even though you pay a premium compared to a soft drink (you do the math).

I make an even bigger mistake (starting the day with a 5.4% pint isn’t that clever) by adding an extra six onion rings to a meal already equipped with a half dozen.

Have YOU ever ate a dozen onion rings and then attempted a ten mile walk ?

No, me neither.

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Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

29 thoughts on “THE JOY OF BURGESS HILL SPOONS”

    1. The reason why beer is more affordable in Spoons than in most pubs is because there aren’t multiple layers of ownership each trying to bleed the one below white.

      Let’s take a pub where the operators have bought a lease – at a silly price – from Punch. Well, who owns Punch?

      This is what AI says:

      “Punch Pubs & Co. is currently owned by the American private equity firm Fortress Investment Group.

      Ownership Details

      Fortress Investment Group: Acquired the company in December 2021 from its previous owners, Patron Capital and May Capital.

      Mubadala Investment Company: As of late 2024 and 2025, Fortress is itself majority-owned (70%) by Mubadala, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, after a deal with SoftBank.”

      They all want their returns…

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      1. There’s nothing to stop anyone starting a company to compete with Spoons, what with all the empty town centres I read about (but never see) there must be plenty of sites that can be picked up cheap, plenty of people in need of jobs who’d work in hospitality, and plenty of breweries willing to sell their beer to Spoons at good prices. But someone will be along to tell me why that’s impossible.

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      2. Well I won’t refer to women as wenches, but I’m not one for self imposed rules in general, Martin.

        I don’t think that kids is any less affectionate than nippers, sprogs, etc. personally. And if not for that word then the rhyming slang “saucepans” wouldn’t work. And that would be a pity.

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      3. No, there’s nothing to stop your proposition, Martin, but what many people would rather is for their local village, suburban, or estate pub, just a short walk away, to be affordable, and run by people who are happy in their work rather than desperately trying to break even after paying themselves a meagre wage once the lion’s share of the profit on each pint has been swiped to trickle up to those long-suffering billionaires in the US and OPEC countries.

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      4. I can’t argue with that Etu. Do you think Spoons staff are less happy in their work than other hospitality workers ? The house magazine is full of stories who’ve been supported to build a good career there.

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      5. I wasn’t commenting on the happiness of Spoons staff, but rather on those trying to run pubco-owned pubs, Martin. Quite often it’s not even the leaseholder who runs them, but a sub-lessee, or a contracted management.

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    2. Animals have no place in pubs (sorry, Mudgie), though I will tolerate a snake like the one in the Blisland Inn.

      Children (a “kid” is a baby goat) are always welcome in any pub I’m in as long as the publican allows them.

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  3. “Even Harvey’s can’t keep Quench in the Guide, replaced by a craft bar and a Spoons.”

    Ah, bracketing the clientele, so to speak.

    “Which might make you think that Burgess Hill is worthy of a detour from Lewes.

    It’s not.”

    Yup, your ‘walk’ there convinced us of that.

    “But not because of any fault of the Six Gold Martlets (something to do with Jason and the Argonauts, I think). ”

    That was Jason and the Golden Fleece. Which would take more than the skinning of six gold martlets to make.

    “CAMRA’s Discourse is in a ferment at the moment over the merits of JD Wetherspoon.”

    (looks down)
    Blimey. CAMRA reminds me of the high ranking wizards of Unseen University in the Pratchett novels. They bloody argue for the sake of arguing (especially if there’s free food and drink).

    “15 positive things about Spoons there, all of which I agree with, but they’re just not very comfortable, are they ?

    I concur. They’re not what most of us would call ‘pubs’. They’d fit right in over here though (sigh).

    “Give me the Hat and Beaver in Atherstone any day.”

    See!

    “But the GBG isn’t about comfort, and I reckon the cask quality is up a notch of late,”

    Good lord. No offense but would the GBG include a pub where one had to sit on spiked nails just because the beer was ‘marvy’? (sheesh)

    ““Enjoy” says the nice lady, and the staff are the best thing about the Six Gold Martlets.”

    Ouch!

    “That, and the prices. £2.25 for a quality 5.4% Old Ale. It would have been £1.75, but I’ve lost my Spoons voucher so I ordered it as part of a meal like Mudgie would, even though you pay a premium compared to a soft drink (you do the math).”

    That, in itself, is a topic over a few pints to be sure. Crappy places (no offense to Swivel Hill or whatever the two would be called if they merged) but the price reflects the location. The same everywhere in a way.
    I shall just leave it at that, for now. 😏

    “I make an even bigger mistake (starting the day with a 5.4% pint isn’t that clever) by adding an extra six onion rings to a meal already equipped with a half dozen.”

    First off, I still can’t wrap my head completely around the ABV of your beers. 5% is standard over here for most beers, apart from light beers, which are usually 4.5%. I know enough that you sup on pints of 4% or even lower, which makes sense, but it still seems strange to me.

    As for the onion rings, hah! I’d gladly give mine away.

    “Have YOU ever ate a dozen onion rings and then attempted a ten mile walk ?”

    (looks up at bill)
    Hmm. You have VAT, which is more than our 12%, but we ‘have’ to tip (sort of) another 15% so that’s a wash, kind of. 😏

    And your VAT of 2.29 doesn’t match up with anything. VAT of 2.29, at 20%, would mean it’s based on 12.45, which doesn’t match any combo on the bill.
    My head hurts. 😎

    Cheers

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    1. Good grief there’s a lot to unpack there, as they say. I’ll take a rest and come back to this one, but when I say you make some interesting points about comfort you must take me at face value. I think a comfortable v uncomfortable pub contrast would be fascinating. Actually, the last pub I’m going to write about was astonishing unpleasant, in several ways.

      Right, pausing there. 543 comments this month, already. The only time I was getting more was before Richard and Alan died.

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      1. I’m going to reply succinctly to this one. 😎

        I agree with those who say they never rate anything a ‘5’. Perfection should be hard at attain, and if one attains it all of the time, that takes a bit of fun out of it all.

        Also, moderation or compromise is one of the mainstays of practically anything. I’ll take a not so great beer if the place is comfortable/suitable to my liking. And so forth…

        Cheers

        Liked by 1 person

    2. So much to reflect on here in one comment.

      Indeed, Burgess Hill brackets the clientele. Spoons for pensioners and families, the craft bar we’ll see later for younger crafties, cocktail driven Quench for “women who wine” (not a typo) and a scruffy but trad old Greene King pub at the station.

      When I say “the staff are the best thing about the Six Gold Martlets” it’s more a commendation of the staff cheeriness than damning the rest of the Spoons offer. It’s really good beer, and a joy to see old folk getting out and about.

      A cool, rich cask beer at 3.6% (or 3.4% now the beer duty has pushed breweries towards that) will probably be more satisfying than 5% keg one, again not a comment on the beer quality just preference.

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      1. One man’s meat is another man’s poison so to speak? I’d say it’s impossible to cater to everyone so a choice is just that; and sometimes it’s a choice between two things that appeal in different ways.

        So here’s to choices! I was in East Berlin for a day back before the wall came down. I much prefer what we have for choice compared to that!

        Cheers

        Liked by 1 person

    3. Tipping is odd with Spoons. If you’re “served” by someone who takes your order and then you pay at the end, most people would still tip, if not at the 25% that Americans are expected to do because they don’t pay their staff. When you order upfront at the bar, less folk would tip, though I did in those circumstances in Rye last night. Is paying upfront in Canada ?

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      1. Paying up front is rarely done here. And no getting your own drinks. You sit and get served, whether it’s just drinks or food, or both. You can pay as you go if you sit at the bar itself, but it’s not mandatory.

        As for your two other comments above that, I’m going to reply later, as Sunday was a long day for me. (it doesn’t help that every Saturday night, I stay up way past my bedtime doing a video chat with my brother in France – 9 hour time difference. Needless to say we drink beer during the chat and I usually don’t get to bed till gone 1am, but am still up at 7am Sunday morning).

        Cheers!

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  4. Russ, you are slipping!

    1) There should be a letter “e” at the beginning and a letter “n” at the end of the word ate.

    2) The bill total is £13.73.
    so before VAT is charged the sub total would have been £11.44.
    VAT at 20% of that sub-total is £2.28 rounded up to £2.29

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    2. Fair cop on the VAT. I just assumed the VAT was not part of the total, but being shown separated out. If I’d continued to tally it up completely I would’ve realised that. 😏

      Over here, the tax is shown separate, but is not part of the total, if that makes sense.
      (i.e. our tax would be added to the final total, so on that bill, the final total would be £16.02 instead of the £13.73.

      As for the ‘ate’/’eaten’ thing… what Martin said. 😎

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      1. I had an unfortunate experience in New York in 2019, Russ, after an extended session at The Ear (they had keg Bass on). The server put down a bill folded so the figure was, say $52 or something. I left $70, thinking a reasonable tip even for America and popped to the Gents (which are great).

        I came back to the server saying “Hey ! You underpaid“, and realised the bill continued in a complex manner over the fold and added up to $72 something. I’d completely forgot half the beers. Felt so embarrassed.

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    2. Lana, Stockport Peter would have disagreed with you and I will remember for a long time him always being happy for me to help myself to any greenery on his lunchtime pub meal plate.

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  6. 16. Tim says that “All customers must be fully clothed throughout their visit. The company does not permit the removal of shirts or footwear”. That is to be commended.
    But why hasn’t Humphrey demanded that ?

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