The Counting House (JD Wetherspoon), Glasgow

The Counting House is a Wetherspoons in a grand old city building with a large misshapen island bar over which an impressive dome sits. In amongst the standard and premium keg are two banks of six hand pumps. These were drawing Belhaven’s 80 Shilling, Sharp’s Doom Bar and Sea Fury, GK Abbot Ale, Harviestoun’s Bitter & Twisted and Schiehallion, Kelburn’s Dark Moor and Red Smiddy alongside Heather Ale’s Fraoch. It wasn’t overly busy when I visited on a recent midweek evening, but the service was unnecessarily slow.

The destination Wetherspoons in town as far interiors go, this is a lovely bank conversion (formerly RBS) in an Italian Renaissance style. Admire the jumbo central island bar situated below a huge glass cupola, a boon for natural light. Also note the statues holding things, dotted around the ceiling as well as lots of old paintings. If you can grab a seat in the right spot there are nice views of the City Chambers to be had. Unusually for Spoons there’s a hidden snug situated in the old vaults – I managed to sneak in for a quick gander before it was cordoned off for a bunch of shaven meatheads to take over (I wonder if the room was bugged by Starthclyde Polis?). All sounds too good to be true, and indeed so; despite the sea of handpumps the cask range was limited and one of the two genuine guests, Strathaven Ebony, was somewhat tart (NBSS 1.5), and also served in a pint pot which I don’t think has ever happened in a Spoons before! Mixed bag, but worth it for the interior – maybe stick to bottles, however. On a better day, this’d be looking at an 8+ score… 6.5