The Castle, Colchester

Facebook page of The Castle - www.facebook.com

Official site of The Castle - castleinncolchester.co.uk

Facebook page of The Castle - www.facebook.com

Official site of The Castle - castleinncolchester.co.uk

A prominent street corner pub in the middle of Colchester’s High Street, it is, as might be expected, located just outside the castle grounds and consists of a single room pub with reasonable amount of pavement seating to the side. The pub management have clearly taken on board ETA’s comments from the review below, as there is no longer any sign of anything brown here….. the downside is that everything is grey instead. It’s largely all one open plan room internally, although a separate area up a step or two at one end does break up the space a little. It has clearly had some refurbishment at some point, although I use the term loosely as the pub is now devoid of any character that it may have once had. The flooring is sanded wooden boards, whilst all the timberwork, including the beams on the ceiling which were no doubt once an attractive feature, have all been painted grey. The walls had grey wood panelling on the lower part of the walls with cream plasterwork above, whilst the raised area at the end had grey carpet on the floor, although to be fair there were some attractive mottled tiles beyond this. Chairs were a mixture of wood, plastic and upholstery, all in grey, whilst I noticed that the loos had been retiled in grey. An old tiled fireplace looked to be no longer in use and a good mix of 80’s music was playing, although just a tad too loudly perhaps. Beers on tap were Hops & Dreams, Tribute and Ghost Ship, whilst a fourth pump for Caledonian’s Edinburgh Castle appeared to have run out. Ciders meanwhile were a trio from Strongbow with their regular, Cloudy Apple and Dark Fruit. Overall, whilst the barmaid was friendly enough, I can see little point in returning here if I’m honest and certainly wouldn’t make a special effort.