Wm. Hawkes, Hull

Reading the earlier reviews, it seems this has not always been a pub, which is surprising as it is convincingly olde worlde on the inside. Very dark wood covered in brasses, tankards suspended from the ceiling, horns above the bar, all looking like a collection that has been built up over many years. An impressive nine cask ales at the bar - I went for Plum Porter by Hilltop at £1.70 for a half (£3.40 a pint). There is also a back room which leads to the toilets. There are candles on every table, and all of them were lit which I thought was a nice touch for the limited custom in the afternoon. Even the candles in the empty back room were all lit. It's a dark but cosy place, and I liked it.

This is the sister pub of the nearby Lion & Key and Walters venues and is perhaps the closest of the three to a full-on traditional pub, despite the fact that this was, until recently, a solicitors office. You enter to a compact front bar with dark floorboards and wall panels which make the place look like a historic Old Town pub. The servery is immediately to the right upon entry, to the point that I was still propping the front door open with my boot whilst ordering my pint. The bar, in keeping with the rest of the room, has a dark wood counter, a modest bar back and a canopy with all the beers listed across its length. The canopy also has various hunting horns and bugles hung from it, and this hunting theme continues through the rest of the pub, hinting at the building's past use as a gunmaker's shop. For all the dark wood panelling in this front bar, very little of it is actually on show, thanks to liberal decoration with items such as horse brasses, tobacco tins, tankards, pans, ladles, clocks, paintings, sketches, candles and much more besides including an ancient looking telephone on the end wall. Seating is limited to a few low stools around sturdy iron-bottomed tables along the left hand wall. A passageway beyond the bar leads you past an old safe set into the bare brick wall with a few road signs opposite, into a smart rear room with comfy bench seating around the perimeter with standard chairs and low stools elsewhere. There were loads more bits on show here including a huge display case showing a stuffed fox sniffing out a stuffed rabbit. Both rooms have the large cartwheel light fixtures seen in the Lion & Key, but unlike that pub, a music soundtrack was playing quietly in the background. This place also shared a very similar beer range with its sister pubs, offering Cat's Head Pale Ale and The Reaper, Neepsend Red Equinox and CETO, White Rose Original Blonde, Cottage Pullman and Hilltop Classic Bitter and HTC. Bar blockers were in full effect on a busy Saturday evening, so I couldn't see if there was much of a keg range, but my pint of Red Equinox was certainly in good shape and the bar staff seemed like a friendly and well drilled bunch. I liked this place, which I thought was a cosy, comfortable little pub and I was surprised to learn that it was a recent conversion rather than a venerable Hull institution. The place perhaps doesn't offer too much of a point of differentiation from the Lion & Key, which means that, having just come from one to the other, it felt a bit like an overspill rather than a stand-alone venue, but even so, I thought there was a lot going for this place and I'd happily visit again.