The White Swan Hotel, Stratford Central, Stratford-Upon-Avon

The White Swan is a smart Fulllers pub, hotel and restaurant that was very quiet when I visited on a recent midweek evening. The entrance opens up to a front seating area with purposely distressed sofas and sofa chairs as well as two fireplaces. More seating is found to the left where there’s another fireplace and towards the rear is an L-shaped bar counter. This supports standard and premium keg alongside nine handpumps. Only London Pride, ESB and Dark Star’s Orbiter were available. To the right of the entrance is an L-shaped dining area where all the tables have candles and towards the rear are two more small seating areas on the way to the toilets. There are function room adverts, I’m not sure if there is a function room tucked away or if the different seating areas are available for hire. I found the barmaid to be a bit curt, but the other staff were very friendly. I’d pop back in if passing.

Expensive pub with the range of Fullers beers you would expect to see. Worth a visit.

Very attractive Fuller's bar, restaurant and hotel with a tastefully refurbished but ultra-traditional interior to please to visitors looking for olde Stratford without the sawdust... The multi-room layout has been partially opened out, but there remains a good deal of separation between the various seating / dining areas. Also has a small patio area out front. Pride, ESB, Summer Ale and Red Fox were available from a total of nine handpumps, but the price of the latter (£4.40) was by far the most expensive I found in Stratford.

A good sized and attractive looking pub / hotel in the centre of town, there is a courtyard garden at the side of the pub and a number of different rooms internally, including a quite elegant looking restaurant area to the right where all the tables were laid up with wine glasses, white starched napkins and so on. The main bar is at the front left of the pub and this is an attractive room with plenty of wonky thick black beams on the uneven ceiling as well as very old supporting pillars. Leaded windows looked out on to the street and there was an old fire-place with a log fire which was a pleasant touch on a cold February afternoon. As might be expected, various Shakespeare paraphernalia was dotted around including a bust of the bard and various posters from his plays. The paintwork was predominantly a khaki shade of green which seemed perhaps an odd choice given the building’s history whilst the flooring was a mixture of parquet wood and flagstones. Overall, whilst this was certainly a pleasant pub, it somehow felt not quite as “olde worlde” as I would have expected, although it was difficult to put my finger on why exactly. Perhaps some of the refurbishments over the years hadn’t been quite as sympathetic as they could have been. Food wise, the menu was a step or two up from your usual “pub grub”, with the cheapest of the main courses coming in at £11.95 and going up to £25 or so for some of the steaks. That said, your usual pub dishes such as fish & chips, burger or cottage pie were among the options offered. As though to emphasise the pub’s up market dining credentials, a large wine cellar with a wrought iron gate across it was just next to the dining room entrance. Beers on tap were Bengal Lancer, Fuller’s ESB and London Pride, whilst the solitary cider was a pleasant Cornish Orchards. Prices seemed expensive with two halves coming in at £4.85.