White Horse, Banbury

Pleasingly traditional Good Beer Guide pub, with a partly opened-out, multi-space interior with at least five different seating / dining areas in an overall L shape. Mixture of furniture and of different bits and pieces to look at. I understand it to be a Project William pub, so no surprise to find Everard's Tiger, but that brewery's limited edition Pitch Black stout was also available from a duplicated selection on the two banks of five handpumps. The other real ales were Daydreamer from Little Oxford (£4.00), Old Hooky and Brill Gold.

A sizable roomy pub with five interesting beers on across the ten handpumps,five in each room.I tried Three Little Pigs from Slaughterhouse,a decent drop.A pub well worthy of a visit.

Eclectic decoration and furnishings. Excellent real ales on - I had an Everards Tiger and a never seen before Affinity (Champion Beer of Norfolk, no less). Seemed quite expensive to me - £5.80 for a pint and a half of cider? Less than a fiver in the much more salubrious Three Pigeons where we came from. Worth checking out. Visit blogged at http://bit.ly/2ixN3dV

This would seem to be a Project William pub without any obvious partner. The blackboard listing the beers for September made no mention of White Horse beers although there were a couple listed from Vale brewery neither of which were on. Inside it's a nice enough open plan area, roughly L shaped and with an assorted clientele on my Saturday evening visit. Live music was advertised for Friday nights. The bar has two sets of five hand pumps but all seemed to be doubled up. As far as I could make out beers available were Everard's Tiger, Beacon Hill & Sunchaser, a Turpin beer and Derby Black Magic. I went for the Black Magic (£3.70) which was so good I stopped for a second. It's not the best Project William pub as it seems to be an Everard's pub with a couple of guests but was still the best pub visited in Banbury on the day.

If The White Horse is still a Project William collaboration between the White Horse and Everards breweries then it is something of a disappointment. It's an imposing stone building on the main road through Banbury and has clearly been relatively recently refurbished. The pub doesn't seem to have been done as well as most of the other Project William houses which I've visited. In addition, there aren't any White Horse beers available so perhaps Everards have taken over completely. Whatever the case, as a large pub it was sparsely populated on our Thursday evening visit with that air of melancholy which often precedes something of a change. Beers on were: Miners Miners Best Bitter, Newark Norwegian Blue and three from Everards being Ascalon, Sunchaser and Tiger. The Tiger was perfectly drinkable and a couple went down but I have had better. Banbury struggles for decent beer so The White Horse is worth a visit for the Tiger alone.