Masons Arms, Hanley, Stoke-On-Trent

Situated in a back street off the main drag this is a decent enough pub. An old Victorian pub - according to a local - though modernised inside. Two rooms with the one to the right mainly for diners. The other room is very pubby with all the necessary parts, pool table, darts, fruity and tellies. 4 real ales on with two beers from RAN brewery and one Titanic beer. The ever pervading smell of gastropub food did make it a slight disappointment. A nice enough pub though.

Backstreet local in an unprepossessing area of Hanley. It’s quite a grand building and a number of original features remain, the most notable of which are the lovely leaded and stained glass windows. Two rooms inside, a nice dining-only lounge to the right and an old-school public bar to the left with pool, darts and a drop-down screen showing the Mission Impossible film to a couple of slack-jawed locals and Augustus Gloop. Colour scheme is best described as ‘burgundy and magnolia sandwich’. This has recently become a brewery tap for RAN ales and we were looking forward to trying out their wares. However despite three being clipped it transpired that only one was actually available…some sort of a joke, surely, for a Friday night. Made even worse by the resultant single beer being a pretty poor pint as well. A quite atrocious 20 minutes and we were happy to hot-foot it out and onward. A real let-down and if a pub has less than a double-digit attendance on a Friday night, you’ve got to be thinking it doesn’t have much of an immediate future - though a brewery tap with only one beer on from said brewery kind of tells you where the issues arise.

Operating as the tap for RAN ales of Fenton.