Duke of Gloucester, Crewe

Official site of Duke of Gloucester - www.thedukeofgloucester.co.uk

Official site of Duke of Gloucester - www.thedukeofgloucester.co.uk

The Duke of Gloucester is a large JW Lees pub located just off Crewe Green Roundabout on the northern edge of a business park. I was staying in the Travelodge over the other side of a large car park so decided to pop in on Thursday afternoon last week. There is a terrace out the front and halfway down the left side of the pub. This area has a mix of picnic tables and patio furniture. The main bar area has a long L-shaped serving counter that supports four or five handpumps, one of which was drawing JW Lees Bitter. The MPA was off. There is also a standard and premium keg selection. At the front of the bar is a carpeted seating area and high tables down the centre of the pub separate the bar counter from seating under the front windows that look onto the aforementioned terrace and car park. At the rear is a carpeted dining area. To the right of the front entrance is the smaller Waiting Room bar, that was empty during my visit. In here are another couple of handpumps, again Bitter was available and MPA was off. Some background music was playing throughout and I didn’t spot any televisions. This isn’t a place I would go out of my way to visit again, but it is handy for the hotel.

Modern JW Lees pub / restaurant, apparently named after an experimental steam locomotive with an innovative valve system developed locally (but ultimately doomed to failure as diesel traction soon superseded it). Anyway, the place has a sensible mix of seating / dining areas with a more-imaginative-than-most variety of furniture and decor in the different spaces in the main ('Station') part of the building. Also has a smaller and plainer 'Waiting Room' public bar with a pool table. The brewery's Bitter, MPA and seasonal Dirty Dozen were available from the various handpumps in each bar.