The White Horse, Hassocks

One of a couple of pubs in the fairly pretty, but traffic-clogged village of Ditchling, the White Horse shares the premises with a cafe/village shop. Parking is very limited. There is a bar area at the front of the pub, with space for diners at the rear. Beyond that is an outdoor patio, spread over a couple of levels, with plenty of space for both drinkers and diners. The gents toilets are also outdoors. The friendly barmaid showed an interest in why we were there, whilst the selection of 5 real ales was the widest we saw during the day. Harvey's Sussex Best Bitter & Long Man Long Blonde were both on, along with Harvey's Armada Ale, Long Man Rising Giant & Timothy Taylor Landlord.

Official site of The White Horse - www.whitehorseditchling.com

Official site of The White Horse - www.whitehorseditchling.com

24/12/2009. Two years ago this was the perfect local boozer - great staff, great service, great atmosphere, telly to watch sport, so on and so forth. Whoever is now running this place is obviously determined to run it into the ground. Following a minor refit about a year ago the pub remains in a half finished state and is totally bereft of any of the above. It is minimally staffed and the service we experienced last night has to rate as the worst I've seen in any pub in the country (and I've been to an awful lot of them). At 22:40 the barmaid's boyfriend turned up at which point she locked all the doors (including the route to the toilets). My request for more drinks was greeted by the response 'are you joking, we're closed', she then returned to her boyfriend to discuss her important day of Christmas shopping. No more open until 11pm, no more 10 minutes drink up time, no more ringing of the last orders bell. And all this at Christmas. We took our custom over the road to The Bull which I suggest everyone do in future ! Avoid, seriously !!!