The Town Hall, Staines Town, Staines Upon Thames

The Town Hall was originally built in 1880 when the area was cleared to make the Market Square. The building will be familiar to some cinema fans as it doubled up as the Court House in the Richard Attenborough epic “Ghandi”. It is now a Smith & Jones pub and it has to be said they haven’t made the best of what is a fine local landmark. The interior is predictably cavernous with a high semi-barrelled roof (containing some incongruous air conditioning pipes) a long bar down one side, a raised seating area opposite and balcony (was closed on my visit) wrapping itself around one side and end. The central floor space was largely open suggesting that a seething mass of Saturday night revelleres would be flowing in at some point however by the time I left at around 8.30pm there were barely 20 people inside – that’s around 1 door bouncer for every half dozen people. By contrast the 2 floor ‘Spoons opposite was rammed to the rafters. Sport is shown on the 2 screens behind the bar and in each corner of the seated side but there are 2 smaller and more intimate rooms to the front of the building where you can partially escape the TV’s, empty atmosphere or intrusive music. There were 3 hand pumps with Bombardier, Hobgoblin and Batemans XXXB available – I had the latter which at £2.45 was more than reasonably priced but was sadly bordering on the undrinkable. If I’d thought it was worth it I would have probably returned it but I didn’t get the impression from comments elsewhere that they really take much notice when it comes to beer quality. A scan of the food menu revealed a typical PubCo selection with the usual “2 for” offers which I hope would be better quality than the beers (I didn’t attempt anything). The place is worth a visit at the right time out of curiosity (and I’m sure the beer can’t be as bad every time) but on the whole it seems to be aimed at the mass market binge drinker community and those who won’t get up before the crack of noon the next day. Shame because the building deserves a more sympathetic approach and could be so much better. I dare say it but even ‘Spoons would probably have made a better job of it.