Boars Head, Stockport

The Boars Head is a Sam Smiths pub with central lobby that is served by a bar that supports their usual keg along with cask Old Brewery Bitter. There are a few seating areas that lead off from this lobby, including a large room to the left that is also served by the bar and houses a dartboard. Each room is well kept and there are lots of framed local history prints on the walls. Food is available, the burger is priced at £8.50. I found the service to be polite and the locals in attendance were all harmless enough. Cash only.

the landlady here is very friendly and keeps a very good pub, it must be said. Pretty busy with the older crowd on a Saturday afternoon, but much quieter than its neighbours later on. Old-fashioned multi roomed layout.

This is a pub I had visited before over 25 years ago. I suspect it's hardly changed since then but the Sam Smith's range of bottled beers certainly has. It remains a multi roomed pub as described below that wasn't too busy on a Thursday night. I went for their bottled India Ale (£3.90) which was sweet but more interesting than their cask OBB. It's a nice pub but it's a shame about the dismal cask choice.

A fairly decent Sam Smiths pub. I'm not a big fan of Sam Smiths pubs as a whole but they are cheap and usually friendly enough. This is a multi-roomed pub, well described elsewhere so I'll just add my view that its worth a visit and though there are better pubs near I didn't mind this place.

The ‘other’ Sams pub in central Stockport, this one is a fascinating example of Stockport monoculture. Housed in a solid red brick building, it’s a multi-roomer inside with them placed off the servery. The interior is done-out in classic Sam’s style (flock wallpaper + £££ retro-fit = tradition) though I thought there felt like a slight air of shabbiness to things. Star of the show for me was the lovely curved bar. Cask OBB on which unfortunately was a pretty flaccid drop and not a patch on Queens. I could have got unlucky with my beer but I didn’t feel this one had quite as much immediate draw compared to some other pubs nearby (a high bar, admittedly). It’s worth a nose though, for sure. 6.5

Another pub on Stockport’s market square, this is a cracking old-school Sam Smith’s outlet. The pub has a great layout comprising a series of rooms radiating from the servery which is positioned centrally on the rear wall, opposite the main entrance. Two very nicely appointed front rooms seemed to be the most popular area for locals to congregate on my Friday night visit, offering plush seating and relatively easy access to the bar. To the left is a more basic room with limited seating next to staircases which lead to the toilets, guarded by a rather charming pub cat on this occasion. To the right of the bar, the main lounge can be found, with a couple of smaller, snug-like areas formed off of it. The carpeted lounge has been decorated with some very evocative old fashioned wallpaper and has supremely comfortable button backed banquette seating running around the perimeter. Large potted plants, fresh flowers and collections of porcelain add splashes of colour and I found this was a much more relaxed area than the heaving front rooms. Unlike previous reviewers who visited at lunchtime, I found the pub had a very mixed clientele, with plenty of young drinkers rubbing shoulders with old boys, couples and colleagues out for post-work drinks. This being a Sam Smith’s pub, only the Old Brewery Bitter was available from the hand pumps at the wallet-friendly price of £2.00 a pint. The usual Sam Smith’s keg and bottle range was also available but I fancied the OBB and found my pint was in excellent shape and I enjoyed supping it whilst reflecting on an excellent day crawling round the town’s best pubs. I found this to be a really lively town centre pub with a great interior and supremely cheap beer. The place clearly offers very different experiences depending on when you visit, but I really enjoyed my time here and was tempted to stay for a second pint. The limited ale selection may put some off, but I would say this is a must-visit pub when in the town centre.