Duke of Buckingham, Portsmouth

The Duke of Buckingham is a pleasant pub with a notional two room interior, located in the historic part of Portsmouth. On entering, you follow a walkway of sort into the main bar area – a bare boarded room with a low beamed ceiling, which sees the servery positioned along the left-hand wall. The bar has a simple tongue and groove counter front and a basic bar back lined with a good collection of pump clips and with a flat screen TV in amongst it all, turned off throughout the course of our stay. Most of the seating can be found on a raised carpeted section directly opposite the bar. Pew and chair seating options stand beneath half-panelled walls with plain uppers that have been decorated with pictures of Portsmouth Harbour and other items of local interest, whilst a nice brick fireplace stands on the rear wall, sporting a collection of old horse brasses. High shelves around this part of the room display an impressive collection of ceramic port and sherry dispensers and other such bits of breweriana. The other ‘room’, if it can be called such, can be found in the front left corner of the pub, hidden behind a partitioning screen and unusually accessed through the servery. It’s a nice enough area – no doubt where the local’s all congregate – with more tables and chairs under the large front windows which make it a bright spot to relax in. Pop music played quietly throughout the course of our visit, which was too early in the day to gauge exactly how lively or otherwise it might get in here. The ale range majors on Fullers’ output, with London Pride, Daydreamer, Seafarers and HSB available alongside a guest in the shape of St Austell Proper Job. The Daydreamer was in good shape and a decent first beer for this extended crawl around Portsmouth and Southsea. This is a nice enough pub that feels like a good fit in this older part of town. It’s a functional sort of place that does all the basics well and served up a good drop of beer in comfortable surrounds. The pubs in this part of Portsmouth tend to get overlooked for the back street boozers around Southsea, but I’d say this one is worth re-routing to check out.

The lurid neon green exterior signage in a dreadful font gave me the jumps before entering, however I needn’t have worried too much as the interior is fairly pleasant in a ‘modern traditional' way and has multiple areas with discrete drinking sections. Seemingly owned by Fullers, despite a lack of corporate branding. And this is reflected at the bar which had four pumps dispensing Pride, HSB, Day Dreamer Zesty (NBSS 4) and a guest in St Austell Proper Job. Enjoyable without crossing the rubicon into being a Pompey essential.

A Fullers pub with pleasantly traditional feeling interior, four hand pumps, beers as below,the Day Dreaming was ok as session beers go, decent pub.

The Duke of Buckingham is a cosy Fullers pub with raised seating along the front windows to the left of the entrance and seating down the right-hand wall. The bar, that runs down the left wall, supports four hand pumps that were drawing London Pride, HSB, Proper Job and Day Dreaming. A standard keg range is also available, and food is served. There are daily meal deals available for £10 and the mains on the specials board started at £16. During my recent Friday afternoon visit there was some background music playing and the plasma screen was off with no signs for live sports. However, live music was advertised for Saturday evenings. I found the service to be polite and the staff were unfazed as the Pubs Galore crawlers invaded en masse. I would have no problem visiting here again if in the area.

Yes, I confess it was me. I went for the Proper Job which promptly died in the pulling. Fortunately, my decision to go for the Day Dreamer as the replacement, on the basis that I didn’t come all this way to drink London Pride turned out to be the right one as it was indeed excellent. Interesting pub with two light and airy raised carpeted dining areas as you enter and then it gets darker the further you move into the bar area and towards the small snug to the rear. I wasn’t too taken with the painted blue and white brickwork at first but the pub overall did grow on me once I became ensconced in the traditional tables and chairs at the end of the bar room.

A quirky interior to this modest sized pub,with a raised front section set for dining,a tap room with exposed brickwork painted in various colours,a wooden floor and a mix of levels.The ale selection is drawn from the Fuller's stable with London Pride,HSB and Day Dreamer (decent condition ) on my visit with the guest St Austell Proper Job running out.There was also keg Fullers Red Sky Thinking ,described on the clip as craft keg.Tinny muzak was playing,but it was a friendly stop and worth including on a crawl of the area.