Hogarths, South Shields

Just a short walk across the car park from the metro station, this is a former Yates's bar which has been converted into a plush, comfortable pub. You enter through the nice stained glass double doors to find yourself in a large open plan room with a smart new carpet and attractive wood panelling which has a mock bookshelf frieze running along the top. Several partitioning walls break up the large space effectively, each with etched and stained glass panes inserted. The servery is along the far wall, in front of a nice patterned tile floor, and sees a counter made from the same book-effect panels and a smart bar back with some lion head busts carved into the stanchions between some decent etched glass mirrors. A good mix of seating has been provided throughout, much of which is obscured from the bar area by the aforementioned dividing walls. High tables and stools are prevalent around the bar area, with padded banquette booths and button backed banquettes along much of the perimeter. The walls have been decorated with numerous photos of the local area and to the rear there is a large Hogarth style mural, as befits the pub's new name. Several TV screens were showing live football and horse racing to an appreciative and vocal crowd of locals. I didn't venture outside as it had started sleeting when I arrived, but there did appear to be a terrace to the rear with some decent seating options. There were three ales available at the bar - Black Sheep Bitter, Greene King Abbot Ale and Caledonian Winter Brau (£2.50). The latter was in reasonably good condition but it took me an unnecessarily long amount of time to get my hands on a pint of it, thanks to some of the most disinterested bar work I think I've ever seen. I thought this was a very well presented pub that was presumably a massive improvement on the Yates establishment that preceded it. I found it very easy to settle down for a pint here and enjoyed listening in to the amusingly biased football commentary provided by the locals. The beer range was perhaps a little mainstream but there was enough going on here to convince me that this is worth a look if you're after a quick pint in the town centre.