The Hope & Ruin, Brighton

Located on the main road running from Brighton station down to the seafront, this is a mad, eclectically furnished pub and live music venue. You enter through a porch and down a few steps, past a battered old upright with most of its keys missing, into a bare boarded room with the servery along the left-hand walls and folding front windows that open out onto a cramped pavement seating area. The bar has a dark wood counter with padded frontage and a mirror and bare brick bar back adorned with lots of kitsch porcelain items, each with a raffle ticket pinned beneath it, except all the ticket numbers are either 420 or 666! More tacky stuff can be seen over on the beer fridges and there is a glitter ball hung from the ceiling above the serving area. To the left of the bar, the wall has been covered in old stripped out TV screens, film projectors and reel to reel tape recorders, whilst through the rest of the room, the décor comprises a mix of unfashionable old paintings, shelving full of vinyl LP’s and various potted plants. Meanwhile, the ceiling is a jumble of wooden boards with a toboggan nailed to them, lengths of string with packing foam pieces strung along them, bits of old tile, a healthy collection of twigs and plenty of fairy lights. Two rows of tables and chairs run through the centre of the room offering the majority of the seating, with a third row along part of the right-hand wall. There is a kitchen at the far end of the bar and the entrance to this has been fashioned from the back end of a caravan. In the opposite rear corner, a DJ booth had been set up, propped on an old washing machine and next to a sofa made from a bath tub that had been sawn in half length-ways. Stairs in the porch lead up to the first-floor live music venue – a small, dark room with a cask-less servery to the rear, a pillar in the centre of the room and a small low stage to the front with a surprisingly good lighting rig. As with most live music venues of this nature, I expected there to be no real ale, but was surprised to find four operational handpulls dispensing Franklins Eclipse, Gun Pale Ale, Holler West Coast IPA and a Seacider cider. I tried both the Gun Pale Ale and the West Coast IPA and found them to both be in pretty good shape – the pub was hosting a music festival that weekend and perhaps the additional footfall this generated helped ensure good quality beer. I thought this was an interesting pub with plenty of fun quirky features, some excellent music from the DJ and a good selection of well-kept ales to work through. Whether this pub will hold any appear for those not interested in the live music on offer is for others to decide, but I had a really good time here and would certainly consider popping back to see if they’re this good when there’s no special event going on.

Official site of The Hope & Ruin - www.hope.pub

Official site of The Hope & Ruin - www.hope.pub