The Lamplighter, Northampton

This is a nice backstreet boozer, just a short walk from the town centre, with a reputation for good cask ale. The pub has a roughly square, open-plan room with the servery to the left and plenty of seating elsewhere. The bar has a nice dark wood counter with a matching mirrored bar back and some of the more impressive, yet not too obtrusive, Halloween decorations I think I’ve ever seen in a pub. The room is bare boarded, but with a few large rugs to help dampen down the noise, plus a small raised carpeted area to the front right, which has seating options but looks like it might also double as a stage for live music. Tables and chairs fill the centre of the room, whilst some high tables and stools have been squeezed into the front left corner, next to the bar. There are a couple of nice old tiled fireplaces to the front and rear, various brewery mirrors on the walls and a nice lincrusta ceiling, all of which add character, and the room benefited from muted lighting, which lent a cosy atmosphere to an otherwise open space. A patio garden could be seen to the rear, with a sizable covered section to one side, whilst a reasonable selection of indie tunes played in the background. There were three cask ales on the bar when I arrived - Phipps Ratcliffe’s Celebrated Stout, NVB Pulping On Your Stereo and Vale VPA. I ordered a pint of the latter, only for it to splutter out its death rattle, but the friendly barman suggested I wait a minute for him to pull through a replacement, Brewster’s Hophead, which he then poured me a lovely fresh pint of. I liked this place and thought it covered a lot of bases pretty well, serving a mixed crowd of punters, offering comfortable seating in a well presented space and serving good quality beer with friendly and helpful service. I do wonder if I would’ve found the place a little less warm and cosy feeling had I come during daylight hours, as it’s ultimately just an open-plan square room, but on this visit, it worked well and I’d be more than happy to return.

Nice use of a back street pub, it is opened up downstairs, looks like for live music so does lose a little character, but there is an upstairs room as well.

A backstreet corner pub opened out into one large room and maybe loses a little character it once may have once had.The pub boasts 8 handpumps with seven ales on during my visit , Vale, Great Oakley,Nobbys and Oakham were the breweries represented, Oakham Citra was in good shape. A decent pub well worth a look.

A backstreet gem for the ale drinker. In an area that doesn’t initially look promising, this pub sits quite happily on a street corner and presumably was nothing out of the ordinary a few years back. The main room has unfortunately been stripped and opened-out a bit too much, though there is a nice traditional lounge room available under the stairs (which nobody was using, sadly). Also a large walled beer garden to the rear. The clientèle were mainly young professionals (I get the feeling Northampton is soon to become the next boom-time London commuter town) and students from the nearby Uni. Music nights advertised but TV sport is a no-no. 8 pumps - 7 ales, 1 cider and a well-stocked fridge. Unfortunately my first choice of Oakham came out cloudy and was taken off after I got past the initial barmaid who was fairly clueless and demurred to the more experienced barman. The replacement of Dark Star Hophead was in excellent shape. It doesn’t quite hold the charm to make it an unmissable pub but it’s certainly well-worth the walk out to sample if you have a few hours to spare. 7.5

This is a corner pub in an old terraced street just to the North of the main town centre. Inside it's a single wooden floored room with low tables and chairs. There is a smaller room at the rear that looked like a dining room. There is also what looked like a paved patio to the far right where a few people were sitting in the warm May sunshine. Although there were six hand pumps only three beers were available but this was because their May beer festival was on and they had a metal rack with fifteen casks on it. for the record the bar had two festival ales and Oakham JHB. I went for the Nene Valley Big Bang Theory from the hand pump as there was no cooling arrangements for the beer other than an ineffective ceiling fan and the weather was quite warm. Sadly this was served in one of those horrible dimple jugs and I didn't have time to ask for anything different. It was a very good well kept pint but the price was £4.25 for a 5.3% beer. This is a back street Midlands pub with a derelict warehouse at one end not London. The two Northampton Spoons have the rock bottom price of £1.89 for a standard guest so someone is on the make here. To be fair the other festival ales were more reasonable at around £3.50 plus or minus 20p but it's still the same sort of price as my part of London. Apart from the prices and the jug it was a reasonable place but I doubt that I would return.