Old Fire House, Exeter

This was our first pub on our crawl around Exeter city centre and what a decent initial pub to begin with. We called in here early lunchtime on Friday, so were lucky enough to find the smallest table and chairs near the window looking onto the courtyard. This pub has a lot of historical character with exposed stone walls, flagstone floor and timbers. Two ales on stillage Exeter Brewery Avocet and Hanlons Simcoe. There is also a first floor room for extra seating.I counted up 14 boxes of cider along the back bar, one of which was Fannysbramble Ribtickler. A tad early in the day for sampling cider, so maybe on the next visit.

This nice old fashioned pub, close to the main High Street and a short walk from Exeter Central station, was indeed a former firehouse, which operated from 1834 to 1888. The pub is located in the former engine house and part of the stable block, although the building was put to various other uses, including World War II recruitment office and Co-op store warehouse, before opening as a pub in 1986. The pub has a relatively small interior with a lovely quarry stone floor and rugged stonework walls. The bar runs down the rear wall and has a nice dark wood counter that turns 90 degrees at the far end. There’s a large shelving unit across much of the bar back, with beer on silage in the rear right corner and a cider bar to the far right. A couple of milk churns have been repurposed as bar stools, whilst elsewhere, there are lots of bench and chair seating options, mainly along the front wall and over to the left, where there's also a raised space with enough room for one extra table. The decor is a good mix of old paintings, hop lined ceiling beams, old artifacts such as a nice clock above a wide disused fireplace, and plenty of fairy lights that help to create muted lighting and a cosy feel befitting this old space. A small cobbled courtyard to the front has a few picnic benches and gives a nice perspective of this old building. There may possibly be further seating upstairs, as a few people seemed to be heading up there, but I didn’t explore. Music was playing in the background but the general chatter from a reasonable bunch of punters made it hard to hear what it was. Food came from a pizza menu and although I didn’t try any, it certainly smelt good. There were just the two cask ales on the go when I arrived - Hanlons Citra and Fire Fly - both on silage, but an impressive six ciders in boxes were also available. The Firefly was a decent enough drop, served to me by a bubbly barmaid. Having watched the last free table get snapped up whilst I was being served, a random customer offered me to share his table, from where we were able to marvel at the profane vocabulary of one particularly inebriated young lady sat across from us. This is a cracking little pub in a very nice old building, which is well worth taking a bit of time to explore. The beer straight from the barrel - sometimes a bit of a red flag for me - seemed very good, the service was great and there was a decent atmosphere, making for a pleasant visit and one to remember for a revisit some day.