Spiral City, Barnsley

Long cafe bar in a Victorian arcade. Bar on left side, then a lower seating area along the front window and long padded bench along the window side. Small outside seating in the arcade catches the early sun. Good beer

A new bar to me, but that's because I don't come to Barnsley all that often. We started at the Jolly Tap just opposite and decided to make this the last one of the day, as it's not much above five minutes from the station. There are three hand pumps with beers from Stancill Brewery, their own version of Barnsley Bitter (not as good as Acorn, in my opinion), plus Black Gold and a "delicately aromatic pale" called Pisces. My half of the last named was pretty good (NBSS 3.5) as far as the condition of the beer is concerned, but it was a tad delicate for me. Given that this and the Jolly Tap are facing each other across the arcade and both are currently in the Good Beer Guide, comparisons are inevitable. On my visits to both today, I would say there's not a lot to choose on the condition of the beers, but the Jolly Boys offerings are a little more adventurous by design than the beers made by Stancill.

Directly opposite Jolly’s brewery tap, it’s a bigger place, twice as wide and with various upstairs sitting areas. The ground floor is on two levels with the counter up a few feet at one end. A T-Bar holds a mixture of craft keg and more mundane national kegs, there are two pulls as well, one from local boys Stancil and one from the ever reliable Brew York. Older style bent wood chairs at small round tables on cast iron bases, there is also a fair amount of bench seating, some with flashing fairy lights. De rigour dark grey paint job but the decor from old cinema posters and risque pictures eases the pain. There’s a record shop called Vinyl Underground (selling vinyl) at one end.

New bar, promising 'craft beers, real ale, vinyl records and art'.