Ye Olde Bull & Bush, Stoke Central, Stoke-On-Trent

Pleasingly traditional corner pub retaining a split-level twin-bar layout separated by a gantried central servery. The main (lower) bar has a tiled floor and a large mural, and the higher lounge is more comfortably furnished, with both parts having black & white local history and football photographs on the walls. Four handpumps on each counter, with the 'house' Bottle Kiln Brew and the regular Bass plus Facers North Star Porter (£3.30) and Back, Sack and Quack from Dancing Duck as guests on my mid-week visit.

Pleasant pub with two bars. No strong real ale but Ghost Ship was adequate enough. Could be worth a revisit to see if the beer changes.

Conveniently located in the centre of Stoke, this pleasant two bar pub changed hands in recent years, becoming a free house in the process. I visited on a Sunday afternoon and it appeared that only the left hand bar was open – certainly there were no customers in the compact right hand bar, which a quick peek into suggested was a fairly pleasant lounge bar set-up with appropriately comfortable furnishings. The left hand public bar is set at a lower level than the lounge and is notable from the second you enter for its fabulous Minton tiled floor – a decorative delight that’s worth the price of a pint just to see. A dark wood bar counter runs down the right hand side of the room with a nice stained glass canopy above and you can see through to the upper part of the servery which faces the saloon bar. All of the handpulls appeared to be in the public bar and the range was detailed on boards on the wall and a row of pump clips on a pillar next to the bar. The room has some nice comfy fixed bench seating around the perimeter, with a table to the rear taken over by a DJ who was gamely playing a fairly loud selection of tunes to a disinterested bunch of middle aged blokes. The back wall is covered with a fantastic mural which depicts a lot of Stoke’s most famous former residents (and seemingly a few unrelated famous faces for reasons I couldn’t quite fathom). A couple of TV screens were showing muted live football and music channels whilst the DJ persevered in the face of indifference. A few photos of Stoke City footballers rounded out the decor nicely and I believe the pub has a beer garden to the rear, although I didn’t venture this far. The pub apparently puts as many as six ales on, but there were just the three available on my visit – Draught Bass, Lymestone Stone Cutter and Joules Moon Madness, but six real ciders were being advertised, so perhaps the pub intends to focus more on this niche. The barmaid here was fairly straight to the point with no time for formalities, and served up a pretty good pint of the Stone Cutter – an appropriate final beer for two days of excellent drinking in and around the city. By all accounts, this place has been rescued from relative obscurity and now offers a good range of well kept beers and ciders in comfortable surrounds. This place offers a more authentic pub environment than the nearby Titanic and Joules pubs but somehow failed to win me over to the extent of those top quality venues, but regardless of this, I would say this makes a fairly safe bet for inclusion on a crawl in this part of town.