The Malt Shovel Tavern, Northampton

It was a relief to find a Northampton pub with sufficient lighting that I could see my pint, and even read a magazine. The Malt Shovel is a proper ale house, in which Oakham and Nethergate get good coverage and there's some worthwhile craft keg as well. Very traditional inside with a carpeted floor and tables for 4-8 people, plus old brewery trays and other knick-knacks for decoration. The background music is good, though not quite up to Lamplighter standards of cool. This ones definitely worth checking out, particularly if the battery on your phone is running low from trying to add a little illumination in some of the other pubs in town.

This is an absolutely classic alehouse, ironically located directly opposite the massive Carlsberg brewing plant over the road. The pub essentially has a single room layout, set out across a long yet relatively narrow space, with the servery running along the right-hand wall, although there’s enough partitioning to ensure it feels a bit more broken up and cosy than such a description would normally imply. The room is carpeted throughout, with low panelled walls, cream painted uppers and a decent bar counter with some nice etched glasswork in the gantry above. There is plenty of bench and chair seating in all parts of the pub, some in spots with a limited view of the bar or other seating spaces, ensuring a degree of privacy. The whole pub has been extensively decorated in true alehouse fashion, with breweriana pretty much appearing everywhere you look. The collection includes collections of old branded beer trays, brewery mirrors, old enamel advertisements, beer bottles, a few immaculate brewery posters and some old beer engines, whilst all manner of tankards and jugs hang from the ceiling beams. I also spotted a few curios including one of those old West Country Ales ceramic signs, earthenware in the window sills, soda dispensers, old pub signs, brewery merchandise, malt shovels (obviously) and even an old Part Seven tin. The entrance has a nice modern etched glass pane depicting hops and a malt shovel, whilst the windows have stained glass upper sections and obscured lower panes which blur out the view of the aforementioned mega-brewery. Old 50’s and 60’s tunes were playing quietly in the background and there was a notably older clientele in attendance on my early Friday afternoon visit. The handpulls were dispensing a good selection of varied ales - Oakham Citra and JHB, Vale Black Beauty Porter, Draught Bass, Lincoln Imperial, Pennine Fright Night, Woodfords Nog and 7 Brothers Red Ale. A friendly barmaid sold me an excellent pint of the Porter for £3.90 and I seriously considered ditching part of my crawl so I could come back and try more of their beer. I thought this was an outstanding pub - a great start to a truncated day of pub crawling around Northampton. There’s so much to see here that the place practically demands repeat visits whilst the range and quality of the ales mean that you’re unlikely to struggle to find something you’ll enjoy. Great stuff - this’ll be my first port of call the next time I’m back in town.

Nice real ale pub just out of the main town, there was a beer festival on at the time of my visit and the place was very well attended, unfortunately my pint of Thornbridge Wild Swan was on the cusp of its use by date, that aside this seems to be a cracking pub.

In south end of town on a busy road but worth seeking out. Old signage on the walls, jugs hanging from the ceiling, cosy neat interior, lots of good ales, good service and a fine pub

Top-of-the-range real ale pub, with a partially opened-out interior but crammed full of breweriana and reinvigorated with plenty of character (and naturally, as a result, customers). Mix of seating areas on three sides of the bar - with almost all seats taken on an otherwise ordinary Wednesday evening. Great choice of real ales from most of the 14 handpumps, with the others being changed over in quick time. I went for the Nethergate Mild (£2.80), but there was a wide range of beer styles from mostly local breweries on offer. Excellent!