Black Castle, Brislington, Bristol

The Black Castle looks like its name suggests a Black Castle. Once inside there is a large L shaped room with the bar to the rear,the floor is bare boarded,the seating is normal tables and chairs and tall tables and chairs,there are two pool tables to the front left. I presume this is a Greene King tied house,there were two real ales on the bar,i had a drink of GK IPA,which was a decent enough drink,the other real ale was GK London Glory. Food seems to be a big draw here,but you can sit anywhere. The background music was crap. Pub visited 29/7/2017

A very unusual pub, looking exactly like a black castle as it’s name suggests. I believe that it was built originally as a folly by the local Lord of the manor when this was still part of the countryside outside of Bristol. Unfortunately despite it’s interesting appearance from the outside, it is now located in the middle of a supermarket car park and inside it’s a very bland, corporate affair with no interesting features whatsoever other than a couple of arched doorways and windows. It’s a large, U-shape building, and the courtyard in the centre of the “U” is still pleasant enough, although not quite as attractive as I remember it from my youth when there was a pond and fountains illuminated by coloured underwater lighting. Once you’re inside though, you might as well be in a Brewer’s Fayre, Premier Inn or any of the other bland chain pubs that blight our landscape. The left hand leg of the “U” is more the bar area and this had rather cheap looking laminate flooring, whilst most of the rest of the pub was carpeted and taken up by diners. The bar area has a couple of (orange?) pool tables at one end as well as a pinball machine. Paintwork was a mixture of khaki green, cream and mustard which actually looked better than it sounds. A number of old black and white prints of Bristol were on the walls, as well as some arty black and white close-up photo’s of golf, darts and pool. There were also a couple of plasma’s dotted about which I think may have been showing sports of some sort. Service at the bar was somewhat slow with only one person serving initially and a number of people ordering food and paying by card. A pile of at least a hundred empty glasses at the end of the bar indicated that they are either understaffed or disorganised. I didn’t inspect the menu, but it appeared to be very much the cheap and cheerful sizzling variety, and there were a number of meal deals on every single day of the week such a steak nights, burger night, great big combo nights and even pudding nights. As might be expected, beer choice was not extensive with Bombardier being the sole offering. Ciders were Blackthorn and Strongbow.

Black Castle page at the Flaming Grill site - www.flaminggrillpubs.com

Black Castle page at the Flaming Grill site - www.flaminggrillpubs.com