The Lawrence Sheriff, Rugby

The Lawrence Sheriff is a Spoons that is in the middle of Rugby. Once inside there was a decent sized oblong shaped room,the bar ran down the right side,there was the usuall Spoons seating,plus a few leather settees. There were 10 pumps on the bar,but the choice of beers was poor with most guest beers being too strong for me,i had a drink of Jennings Cocker Hoop which was a decent drink,the other beers i noted were Loddon Bamboozel,Grainstore Ten Fifty,London Pride and Ruddles best. I found this Spoons quite depressing,but the very friendly service from the barmaid helped out slightly. Pub visited 12/7/2014

Pretty much a large square box on one of Rugby's main shopping streets. Several of the beers had "coming soon" signs on them, but when I found a beer that was on and that I wanted to drink, it was a well kept pint. If you've run out of JDW vouchers then there's a small discount for CAMRA members on production of your card. I had breakfast here one morning and it was well cooked and presented and served quickly as well. A good, solid JDW, but not particularly interesting in any way.

Located inside a former Boots chemist store in the historic centre of Rugby, this is now a rather uninspiring Lloyd’s Bar. It’s certainly very formulaic, with the main entrance taking you into a gloomy, wide front area with lots of standard tables and chairs and the odd sofa in a carpeted section of the pub. The area has plenty of dark wood panelling, which adds to the gloomy effect, despite the café style folding front doors which you would expect to brighten things up a little. Further on, the room opens out a little, with the servery running down the right hand wall, some padded bench booths to the right and a couple of rows of standard tables and chairs in between. With the World Cup kicking off the day before, the inevitable bunting and giant flags were on display throughout. Moving towards the rear, a row of high tables and stools runs down the middle of the room to the back door, with banquettes to one side and padded booths to the other. There are some unusual wicker light fittings on display and the walls are covered in floral patterned wallpaper. I counted ten handpulls which were dispensing three ‘Spoons regulars, three guest ales, one cider and a disappointing three ‘Coming Soon’ clips. I was relieved to see Oakham Scarlett Macaw was one of the guests, but unfortunately the beer seemed off form and lacking that characteristic Oakham flavour. I was quite intrigued to visit what I had seen described as an art-deco former chemists shop, but this place really failed to capture the imagination. It works okay as part of a crawl but Rugby has much more to offer than this.

A Lloyds No1 pub,and in my view nothing special at all,just a large open space filled with tables and chairs,quite dull inside with a somber colour scheme,ten handpumps but nothing really to take my fancy apart from the coming soon clips and my choice the usually excellent Oakham Scarlet Macaw, unfortunately this place managed to destroy any flavour by freezing the life out of it,I fail to see any positives in this style of pub,I won't be back to this one.

The other Spoons in town, this one is a Lloyds variant and recently converted from a defunct Litten Tree. More dark and dingy in here than the Rupert Brook. Classic Lloyds styling inside, quite upmarket in a JDW-style way with greys and purples the colours of choice décor-wise. Two of the guest ales were off though my Maxim Swedish was in excellent shape and slipped down a treat even though by this time I’d already had a few. Not bad overall.