The Arnold Machin (JD Wetherspoon), Newcastle Under Lyme Central, Newcastle under Lyme

Full Marks for Wetherspoons in taking another building of character and keeping it in use as a pub, and in this case, as said below, the pleasant stone façade old Newcastle town centre post office. The pub takes its name from the Staffordshire-born sculptor who designed the portrait of the queen which has appeared on postage stamps since 1967. Sadly, however the interior does not match the exterior and inside it’s the usual bland Wetherspoons set up over two main spaces and nothing you haven’t seen in various other locations of the chain, and better if you can visit on a fine weather day when the pleasant side beer terrace overlooking the manicured public gardens can be utilised. But at 11.00AM on a Friday it was performing the usual function for a ‘Spoons of providing a haven from the high street for the senior citizens of Newcastle after a cheap eats breakfast and being one of the few, if only venue in town when you can get a pint at that early hour. In that respect two bands of five real hand pumps as mentioned but unfortunately too many taken up with the usual House ales of Abbott, Ruddles Best and DoomBore. Fortunately the Pheasantry Vulcan Blue Steel, Exe Valley Brewery Devon Glory, Coach House Spring Ale and Nottingham Brewery Rock Mild gave a bit of choice and I will concur with my early doors drinking buddy below that the Rock Mild was indeed very decent and an excellent first beverage of the day. It wasn’t the best ‘Spoons I’ve ever been in and I have been in a lot worse.

This former post office has a pleasing exterior ,while inside this is one of the smaller 'spoons done out in the usual identikit fashion .There is a decent outside terrace,and large windows allow in a lot of light.The bar runs down part of the right wall with two banks of 5 handpumps with the regular dull ales taking up 6 pumps and guests on my brief visit were Pheasantry Vulcan Blue Steel,Exe Valley Devon Glory,Coach House Spring Ale and a very decent Nottingham Rock MILD.A functional pub ,fairly typical of the chain.

This is a JDW set in an old Post Office building. It's a large rectangular place with the bar roughly in the middle and the rest divided into smaller areas. The bar has two sets of five hand pumps which had one unused, the JDW Trio Of Doom and the GK beers doubled up. Happily the remaining four were all Locale, Springhead Roaring Meg, Wincle Burke's Special, Burton Bridge Festival and Beartown Brown Bear. I went for the Roaring Meg (£2.55) which was in excellent nick. This sounds expensive for a Spoons but it's a super premium guest. The standard guest price here is £2.25. This seemed like a fairly decent Spoons to me. I returned here later to get something to eat and the Beef and Ale pie was very good apart from having too much pastry and Doom Bore being the "Ale" used. The Roaring Meg remained excellent.

Amazingly I found this to be quite good with a varied selection of beer styles available. Friendly staff. Maybe I hit it on a good day. Side beer terrace overlooks a nice public garden area. No idea about the food though as I wouldn't eat in any Spoons.