The Ship, Gidea Park, Romford

This is a wonderful rural-style pub with a spectacular timber frame interior, occupying a rather inconspicuous spot on a main road in, what is nowadays, a decidedly urban area. The pub is laid out across multiple rooms, with the right-hand corner entrance leading you into the compact main bar area. This is one of several pleasant dark wood floor rooms with a mix of wood panels, white plasterwork and bare brick walls. The seating here is extremely limited, with just two or three small tables and stools in front of the servery, which runs along the back wall. The bar has a nice traditional counter and matching bar back, whilst to the right there's an attractive small fireplace. Doorways at the front and rear of the room, lead through to a second bar, with even less seating - just a couple of high tables and stools to the front and access to the extended servery at the rear. This area is dominated by the spectacular inglenook fireplace on the left hand wall, which is well worth a look. Moving on again to your left, you come through to a two-part dining room, although this was entirely filled with drinkers on my Thursday night visit. It’s a split-level space with ancient looking black painted timbers acting as a form of partitioning through the middle. Modern floorboards, dark wood panelling, standard tables and chairs ideal for diners and a smaller inglenook fireplace all help to create a pleasant space that I really enjoyed supping my pint in. The decor is a mix of traditional paintings, old clocks, vases of flowers and the like, mixed in with less appealing blackboards listing features such as food options, WiFi codes and a weekly quiz. Very quiet modern pop tunes played in the background, possibly for the benefit of the friendly young barmaid who seemed to be doing the front of house stuff on her own. The pub has made recent editions of the Good Beer Guide and they had three active handpulls on the bar when I arrived, dispensing Taylors Landlord, Sharps Doom Bar and Greene King IPA. The Landlord was £4.40 for a pint and in good condition, flying out of the glass despite my best efforts to soak up the pub’s atmosphere and avoid my inevitable onward journey into Romford. This is a great little pub, offering some well-kept, if a little mainstream, ales in a part of town better known for its pub chains and fizzy lager. The interior is well worth checking out and with a cracking micropub just across the road, there’s a good double header assured for anyone who makes it out here.

This old listed pub is owned by Greene King according to What Pub, although I could see no identification of ownership on the exterior. It's full blown Olde Worlde both inside and out. Going through the main door there is a room to the left that looked more like a dining room and a room to the right where the bar is. I went right, it had a wooden floor, beams, wooden panelled walls, leaded windows, a huge fireplace with a roaring fire and some sherry or wine casks for standing drinkers. There was another area further to the right and there may well have been more that I didn't find. The bar has six hand pumps which had GK IPA & OSH, Doom Bore, Brains Bread Of Heaven, TT Landlord and the Locale Brentwood Gold. I went for the Brentwood Gold (£3.50) which was in excellent condition and I have to say cheaper than I expected. I liked this place and would have given it a 9 if it had a more inspired choice of beers. It's GBG 2018 listed.

The Ship is a really nice looking pub and one of three that are close to each other. Once inside the bar faces on entry,this room is bare boarded and has a beamed ceiling,the room is divided into half by a wall,the walls are wood panelled and the seating is normal tables and chairs,there is a separate room to the left which is through an opened our doorway,this seemed more like a dining room and had normal tables and chairs,there is another small room which is behind the bar. There was a good choice of real ales on the bar,i had a drink of Courage Best which went down well,the other beers were Butcombe Gold,Ship Ale,Adnams Broadside,Taylor Landlord and Doom Bar. This is a very pleasant pub to have a drink in. The pub is closer to Romford town centre than Gidea Park sation. Pub visited 30/6/2016

Official site of the Ship, contains menus and real ale details - www.theshipgideapark.co.uk