Rose Villa Tavern, Birmingham

Large pub with impressive tiled interior and stained glass windows, but decorated in a strange bohemian style with a mixture of dark walls and bright colours. Not unpleasant though, and a friendly welcome. Several ales and a cider on pump; I tried the house-badged bitter which was light and hoppy; origin unknown.

A 2 roomed pub with very ornate windows. 6 handpumps to be found on the bar in the right side of the pub. Tiled walls decorate the inside which also seems to have an affection for deer. A red telephone box is also to be found inside. Its quite an interesting pub to be fair. I had the Two Towers Brewery, Happy Tea Clipper. Which was fine.

Can't add to the the interior descriptions below. 5 real ale taps but just 2 on during my visit.

A must visit if you are in the area - and you can team it up with a nice little pub crawl of some really decent boozers. The architecture in here is stunning - especially the stained glass windows. Real Ale served in a jugged pint pot (unless you ask) and my Black Sheep was in decent nick. Great place to people watch. Some photos on my blog at http://mappiman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/020515-jewellery-quarter-pub-crawl.html

This Grade II listed pub in the heart of the Jewellery Quarter was built by Mitchells and Butler in 1920, yet retains a feel of the ornate Victorian pub-building era. The pub offers a number of distinctly different seating areas, although some sections have clearly been opened out in more recent times, whilst some somewhat incongruous modern décor detracts slightly from the original splendour in places. The main front bar has a terrazzo floor and an elegant curved bar counter opposite a series of banquette booths on the front wall. The dark wood servery boasts a decorative bar back with particularly impressive pillars and top, but the room's real star feature is the row of windows along the front wall, each a large arch shape with beautiful stained glass work depicting a ship motif. A disused door here also has some fine stained glass work worth checking out. Meanwhile, a modern wallpaper frieze runs around the room, with a deer pattern printed on it and there is also a tree trunk painted on the wall next to the bar with a real branch hung from it across the ceiling, from which little ornamental birds and the like hang. Equally odd and unnecessary is the red phone box in the front right corner, which was housing a pump clip display as far as I could tell. Some stunning glazed tile work can be found to the right, and also in the passageway to the side of the room, whilst over to the left there is a plainer section of tiling around a long U shaped banquette. Taking the corridor on the right hand side, you pass a number of cut glass mirrors before emerging in the rear snug - a fantastic little space with parquet flooring, armchair and bench seating lit by an impressive skylight and some light fittings made from antlers. A broad staircase to the right catches the eye initially, but it is the large inglenook fireplace on the rear wall, with a large stone arch and relief detail that is the real star of the show. A proper frieze runs around this room and there is a marvellous tile painting above the fireplace. There is plenty more excellent tiling here and a second arch to the left takes you into another parquet floored room in the rear left of the building, with curved banquette and low stool seating. Some nice stained windows aside, this is the least impressive room in the pub, displaying another of those weird tree branches, a modern tiled 'Way Out' sign, modern art prints and an annoying, buzzing air-con unit. This room had menus and tin cans full of cutlery on the tables, so is presumably favoured by diners. The circuit back to the main bar can be completed from here, passing through a small space with a decoratively tiled floor. Music played very quietly throughout my stay and several posters advertised the possibility of live music in the evenings. There were three ales available on this visit - Black Sheep Bitter, Joules Slumbering Monk and Two Towers Baskerville Bitter - with three more hand pumps out of action. I tried the Baskerville Bitter, which I found decidedly average, but it was at least encouraging to see some local micro breweries being supported. I really enjoyed exploring this pub, which offered up a series of pleasant architectural surprises that made the visit very worthwhile. I hope the owners continue to appreciate the building they have on their hands and ease off with their unnecessary decorative efforts because this is a pub well worth heading out of the city centre to appreciate.

Substantial building, with several large arched windows in an otherwise relatively plain-looking façade. However, once inside, you see that these windows contain decorative stained glass and there is a mix of plain and fancy tiling in the three surviving rooms distributed around the central bar area. Also has some quirky decor, including the old-fashioned red telephone box. A few wooden benches out front too. Three of six handpumps, offering Castle Rock Harvest Pale, Tower Jewellery Porter and Joule's Blonde (£3.40).

As noted in the reviews, the Rose Villa is a pretty impressive-looking building both inside & out, featuring tiling, red banquette seating, a tree branch on the ceiling and that important element so often overlooked - a traditional phone box. On the bar, 6 pumps offer 4 ales, although Hockley Gold turned out not to be neither terrifically gold, nor particularly good. It seemed a bit early in the day for Thornbridge Jaipur; Black Sheep and a.n.other completed the ale line-up. Kegged offerings included Estrella Dam. Music was playing at louder than background volume to the few customers present and I got the impression that they were in the market for the student crowd. In the evening, I've no doubt it's more crowded; possibly too much for an old codger like me.

Architecturally the star of the Jewellery Quarter pubs, the kind of polished concrete that no-one can replicate these days, parquet and a pastiche of medieval tiles form the floor while the walls are tiled with panels in Greco-Romano designs with a papered frieze above. The windows are a display of stained glass with a Tudor ship motif there being a rose on its sails and repeated in the bottom corners and again at the top in stylised form. The counter is a simple carved design forming an island servery to the three rooms that make up the pub's ground floor. The barback is quite splendid incorporating barley twist columns in brass. Furnishing is all very traditional with red covered benches at light wooden tables, there's no room on the walls for pictures but there is the telephone box displaying wine bottles and the big twigs across the dark Lincrusta ceiling as described below, every table has either flowers in wine bottles or plants in metal buckets. The three rooms vary in size with two larger sitting rooms on the road facing sides, it's a corner pub, and a smaller magnificent snug like room with fine but heavy fireplace and more decorative tiling. The counter has 6 hand pulls but only three were in use, Titanic Stout, Magic Rock Curious and sadly the Two Towers had just run dry. My Magic Rock was good but would have been much better through a sparkler. A better than average keg choice is provided on a horseshoe fitting, there are no pulls on the counter facing Vyse St. Cocktails are available if you would like to wait while they're mixed and some 1960s pop music was playing gently in the background. The only quibble I have other than the beer choice being a touch limited and unsparkled was that the owners have hung bloody blackboards with food ad's over some of the tiled panels - philistines!

The Rose Villa Tavern is a large victorian pub that stands next to the busy crossroads. Once inside there was an oblong shaped room to the front,this room had red leater bench seating in bays which faced the bar,the ceiling was high and the staind glass windows looked very nice,there was a proper red telephone box to the right which had lots of wine bottles in it. There were no twigs on tables but there was a large branch ccoming out of the wall behind the bar,this had lights and a few birds on it. There was a smaller square shaped room to the rear which looked pretty poor compared to the front room. There were six pumps on the bar,but dissapointingly four were unclipped,i had a drink of Two Towers Hockley Gold which was a very nice drink,the other beer was Black Sheep bitter. There was some decent background music playing. The pub was quite busy for an early Saturday dinner visit and the student types were having meals which looked very nice. This is a pleasant enough pub to have a couple of drinks in. Pub visited 17/8/2013