The Swan, Stafford

The Swan is a large hotel with rooms upstairs and a ground floor that is split down the centre by a windowed partition. The main hotel, lobby, seating, restaurant are to the left and to the right is a coffee and cake shop followed by the bar area before lots of seating towards the rear. The tiled bar area has a serving counter on the right wall that supports Green Duck Brewing’s Swan Blonde and Satellite. Premium and craft keg are also available from the polite staff. The seating is high tables and beer shelves. This isn’t my sort of place so I can’t see myself returning.

The entrance to this attractive former coaching inn is through what looks like it would have been the entrance to the stables and courtyard. Covered over, this area has the feel of a small shopping arcade with the different aspects of the hotel trade having their own different locations. The dispensing of alcoholic beverages takes place in two different areas, one an open bar counter with seating just off the passageway to the right, the other - further along on the right - a closed area which is evidently available for special events. A quick look through the window of the latter showed the same beers on hand pumps as in the open bar: Green Duck Session IPA and a beer badged as Swan Blonde, which on closer inspection was also brewed by Green Duck; in reasonable condition but unimpressive.