The Queens Hotel, Lytham Town Centre, Lytham St. Annes

Official site of The Queens Hotel - www.queenslytham.co.uk

Official site of The Queens Hotel - www.queenslytham.co.uk

This large seafront pub was built as the Neptune Hotel back in 1857, before changing its name to the Queen’s Hotel, which has survived to this day, despite a brief period of trading as The Rat and Parrot. Today’s pub is firmly in the gastro style and offers a comfortable spot for diners, if not quite so for those just wanting a drink. The interior shows plenty of signs of a former multiple room layout, but it has annoyingly been opened up quite a lot, to no real benefit, as there are a number of structural walls and pillars remaining which mean no real gains have been made in terms of available space. The servery is directly opposite the front door, but soon turns 90 degrees and runs to the back of the room. . The bar area is bare boarded and seemed to offer the only realistic seating options for drinkers, and I found myself on a stool at the bar whilst waiting staff found diners seats at pre-booked tables. There are a couple of carpeted seating areas under the front windows which give good views out towards the sea and the striking Lytham Windmill. The area to the left of the entrance is as close to a separate room as you’ll get and has been furnished with smart leather button backed armchairs. The front right side meanwhile, is partitioned by the aforementioned sections of wall, leaving one raised seating area in the far right corner and another cosy nook near the bar with a fireplace and pictures of the windmill on the walls, in case you can’t be bothered to look out of the window. The rest of the pub is a dining room again divided in two by the partitioning wall. There are lots of standard tables and chairs, whilst the décor consists of model boats, oars, duck heads and other such items. There was a good, lively atmosphere on my Sunday evening visit and I was amazed by the number of dogs in a pub with such an emphasis on food, not that it particularly bothers me. There were three ales on the bar – Caledonian Deuchars IPA and Golden XPA and Theakston Old Peculiar – whilst a couple of extra pumps remained unclipped. I decided to try the XPA, which was in pretty good nick, if not exactly a thrilling pint. I didn’t look at the menu, but saw enough dishes whizz past to establish that the food looks pretty good. The section of bar I was sat at was piled high with cookies, brownies and other such tempting pastries, which I managed to resist somehow. This is clearly a good pub and if I had been in search of somewhere to eat, I would have felt right at home, but it doesn’t strike me as a good place for the drinker and the few of us that were just there for the beer were marginalised and felt a bit ‘in the way’. Perhaps things are different at quieter times of the day, but this was my only chance to visit, so I left with a good impression, but glad to move on.