Deacons, Salisbury

Deacons has a central entrance that opens into a parquet floored wood panelled bar where a barrel sits in the left-hand window, and a high table sits opposite in the right. There’s a fireplace on the left-hand wall adjacent to a television that was off while some background music played from the jukebox during a recent Friday afternoon visit. The serving counter across the rear wall to the right supports premium keg and three hand pumps, the Bass was off, so the cask options were Dark Revolution’s Hazy Day and Hop Back’s GFB. Steps to the left of the counter rise to a tile floored room with padded benches, tables and chairs up the left rear and two dartboards on the right rear wall that are faced by a green sofa. I enjoyed my visit to the basic pub, but I think that was due to the group I was with rather than the surroundings, but I will mention that the barman was very friendly.

An unremarkable exterior, which a couple of our party managed to walk straight past, leads to a decent enough three room pub. You enter into the wood panelled and wooden floored main bar room with a small fireplace to the left and the small serving counter to the right and then a couple of steps lead you to two further rooms beyond. Two of the three pumps were in operation with Hopback GFB and Dark Revolution Hazy Daisy and the third badged with Bass but with the dreaded half pint glass perched on top as described below. Both the available brews were very lively, and it took a fair amount of pulling even to dispense a half, but the Hazy Daisy was perfectly fine when I finally got it. I didn’t really warm to this place, but that might have been that we were the only people in on this lunchtime and when I walked past it again some hours later en-route back to the train station it had a decent crowd in, so it must be doing something right.