The Upper George, Halifax

This was our 7th pub of 10 on our Thursday afternoon Halifax pub crawl and must say i was very impressed with every aspect of the pub. There were 8 cask beers all functioning and on 4 of these had labels attached giving more details of the beer. Without doubt worth a visit if you are in the area.

Official site of The Upper George - www.greeneking-pubs.co.uk

Official site of The Upper George - www.greeneking-pubs.co.uk

The Upper George can be approached from 2 angles, one easily missed and the other impossible to find. I came from the latter having walked past at least three times and dismissing the narrow alleyway as little more than a place for the local shops to leave their wheely bins. One can only imagine how hemmed in the pub would have been before the surrounding warehouses were demolished in the klate 60’s and even today, there is not a great deal of natural light that penetrates the pub leaving it quite dim and dingy in certain corners. The interior is essentially a single room with a central island bar ciontaining an attractive glazed patterned upper canopy. Around the bar there are 3 discernable sections as well as a separate pool room with drinking ledges, a TV and some fine old town centre pictures. TV screens seemed to cover most angles of the pub and as there was fiootball being screened to an appreciative audience, I didn’t get a chance to experience the somewhat legendary jukebox but then I always feel that the music on a juke box is only as good as the taste of the person putting in the money. At the rear (the easier to find end of the pub) is a decent sized if unspectacular courtyard patio with a few benches. There wasn’t a great choice on the beer side of things with just Black Sheep and Doom bar available on hand pump and a generic selection of kegs, lagers etc. At £2.10 for a pint of Black Sheep I was either lucky and found an unadvertised Happy Hour, the barman screwed up or the prices are more than a little reasonable. On the whole, in relation to the dozen or so pubs I tried in town, the Upper George was one of the more disappointing ones, above average but not somewhere that I would say is an essential visit.