The Old Buttermarket, Canterbury

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Pub SignMan left this review about The Old Buttermarket

This is a deceptively large Wetherspoons pub with an ideal location opposite the main entrance to Canterbury Cathedral. Upon entering, you might be fooled into thinking the pub is as small as its frontage suggests, as you find yourself in a small, square front bar with bare boards and limited seating. The servery is to the left and has a tidy dark wood counter and a rather typical Nicholson’s style bar back. There is a nice stained-glass window at the back of the room, but otherwise, it’s all a bit plain and cramped, so you’d be better off moving through to the much larger rear bar, which ironically has a considerably smaller bar counter to the front left, but ample seating options, mainly in the form of tables and chairs arranged across a split-level space. The walls have been decorated with an effective contrasting light/dark colour scheme, broken only by some paintings of various characters from The Canterbury Tales. Lots of mirrors and small partitioning screens can be found throughout this space, whilst to the rear, some steps lead up to a carpeted overspill space with more tables and chairs in a fairly dark space which eventually brightens as you near the back of the room, where some windows can be found. Padded button backed banquettes enhance the seating options here and there’s a load more Chaucer stuff on display, along with an unused TV screen, which made way for a dreadful pop soundtrack that played relentlessly in the background. A few seats on in the pleasant, cobbled square to the front of the pub allow for good people watching, but are permanently cast into the shade by the pub.
The five handpulls on the bar offered a choice of Nicholson’s pale Ale, Fullers London Pride, Taylor’s landlord and Wye Valley Butty Bach, with the final pull left unclipped. I tried the Butty Bach, which was in decent enough condition and served to me by a moderately interested barman.
I expected this place to be an uninspiring tourist trap and, whilst the place is hardly pushing for any ‘Best Pub in Town’ awards, it is nevertheless doing a competent enough job and serving up some reasonable ale in decent pub environment. I’d be more likely to use this place again just because of the convenience of its location than anything else, but as tourist pubs go, it’s not all that bad.

Date of visit – 1st May 2023

On 29^th November 2023 - rating: 6
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