Ye Old Bell & Steelyard Inn, Woodbridge

Comfy old inn with beams and wooden floor, very olde worlde pub

A very attractive half-timbered pub just off the Market Square, it has an unusual hoist protruding at one end of the building which presumably dates from the time when it was a steel yard. Internally it’s quite traditional, with black inset timberwork in the walls and a deep salmon paintwork elsewhere, along with a mixture of quarry tiling, wood strip and carpet on the floors. An old fire-place had a number of horse brasses tacked up above it and a dresser in one corner housed a selection of old crockery. There was even a bunch of hops hanging from the ceiling as well as a number of nautical pictures and a large beer barrel for resting your pint on. Some chunky timber supporting posts formed a partition to a snug to the right had a further brick fire-place at the rear although I’m not sure if this was actually used. It seemed very quiet in there on a recent Monday evening visit, and I thought a bit of background music would have helped to just lift the atmosphere a little. Food is offered and looked to be of the basic “pub grub” genre, although we did not try it ourselves. Beers on tap were Springhead Roaring Meg, Oakham Inferno and Betty Stogs. Ciders were unusually well represented for this neck of the woods with Aspall’s Suffolk, Lime Bay Driftwood and Old Rosie.