The Commercial Hotel (JD Wetherspoon), Accrington

An old Victorian hotel opened out by Wetherspoons in trademark style, lots of darkish wood, carpet which is quite tasteful here, a mix of seating although mostly low for dining. Usual 5+5 hand pumps topped and tailed with T-bars, the casks are fairly well distributed with the evil triplets at one end, a lot of the beers were from Northern Whisper on this occasion. Busy even on a Tuesday lunchtime as you would expect, ditto punters. There’s a raised area to one side, the decor includes a panel about the Accrington Pals* as expected and some music posters and charcoal drawings, more and better than some ‘spoons have. Toilets are upstairs of course with more local interest panels on the stairs and corridors. The staff were mostly pretty good. *The Pals battalions were a recruiting wheeze for the First World War Kitcheners new army, “serve with your pals from your town”, sadly when they were slaughtered like cattle on the Somme it had a devastating effect on their home towns. I found Accrington a very friendly place today and I expect it was more tight knit in 1914-18 so I hate to think what the pain of those days was like.

This is an original pub and hotel although it's not currently one of the JDW chain of hotels. Inside it's the usual open plan layout but split into areas with the bar at the rear right and a raised area over to the left. I came here on a Wednesday morning for breakfast and a pint so it wasn't busy. The bar has ten hand pumps which had one unused, two ciders, the JDW Trio Of Doom, Naylors Lancashire, Coach House Gunpowder Mild, Three Bs Stokers Slake and one called Accy Bees which may have been a house beer. I had the Stokers Slake which was in good nick and went down well with the breakfast. This seemed quite a reasonable Spoons to me.