Prince Albert, Wolverhampton

Recently refurbished and now marketed as a 'bar, club, eatery' with a gastro menu. Beautifully old building standing alone from others. The interior appears smaller than it should from the outside, unless I missed an area, its a grande design, chandaliers, dark wooden tables, padded leather, candles and sofa, its obviously attempting to tap into the users of the nearby Theatre, hotel and arty Lock works (rather than the adjoining bus and rail stations). There is a pre-theatre menu offer. The mainly circular tables are position around the outer walles. Pipped female vocalist music. Its different, not quite my cup of earl grey, a little arty-farty and its not over comfortable surprisingly, but its an ok effort and nice to see somebody trying something different as well as keeping this lovely building open. The food is priced around £9 for a main and there are two real ales - Bombadier and Pride.

An impressive late Victorian building that was built by the Staffordshire brewery Eley’s, it has been closed for six months but is now a privately owned free house since the beginning of September. The frontage is truly magnificent with four storeys of large moulded sandstone windows, topped with four gable ends and two domed turrets. It is one of the first buildings to be seen when walking in to town from the railway station. The main entrance is on the left of the building, this leads into the only room. The public bar has unfortunately been heavily modernised, it has a counter across the right hand side of the room with a large central chimney breast and double sided fire place, pool table in the back left corner, several booths and a couple of leather sofas. The décor is modern with the dreaded “twigs and fairy lights” above the bar counter, a large disco ball hanging from the ceiling and arty abstract paintings on the walls. There was a large projector screen on the left hand wall and four flat screen TV’s showing a music channel, two of which were above the counter. In the middle of the back wall is a door that leads out to a nice patio area. No regular ales at the moment but there were two empty hand pulls that the bar man said the landlord intended to start using soon. There was Highgate Dark Mild on keg but it was pretty poor to be honest. Fantastic building, nice to see it’s still standing and used as a pub, but the interior is a let down and a bit tacky. If the landlord does get some real ale in then the place would have some potential, not really my kind of pub but I will pop back in a couple of months to see how they are getting on.