The Bulls Head, Sedgley, Dudley

Well positioned in the middle of Sedgley, the Bulls Head is a great, traditional Holden’s pub with an in-house Thai restaurant. You enter into the main bar, which comprises a bare boarded room with a prominent, angular servery along the rear wall. The servery has a tiled bar back and laminate counter top, both of which look a bit dated and slightly out of keeping with the rest of the interior. A large set of bull horns are suspended from the top of the servery, in keeping with a loose ‘Bull’ theme throughout the pub. There is a small seating area to the left of the entrance, centred around a plain tiled fireplace on the end wall with lots of bull sculptures on a shelf above and a large yucca plant to the left. A similar space has been set-up on the right hand side where the décor includes bits of breweriana, some amusing miniature pub signs and bawdy sketches and a TV screen which was turned off throughout this visit. The room extends to the rear right, into a slightly raised room with a drinking ledge and high stools down the left hand wall and a long table with standard chairs down the opposite side. A few old pictures line the walls and there was also a board detailing the pub’s history and a high shelf displaying various items of vintage kitchen utensils. A further room beyond this houses the restaurant and has a lot of formally arranged tables and chairs in a space that looked fairly functional. A corridor back here leads out to a nice garden with a shelter to the rear and some interesting items of Oriental art dotted around. There were five Holden ales on the go when I visited – Bitter (£2.50), Mild, Golden Glow, Old Ale and Special. The Bitter seemed like a good yardstick with which to assess the range and I enjoyed a pretty good pint of it, with a decent crowd building up as the afternoon went on. In many towns of this size The Bulls Head would be a stand-out pub, but with the excellent Beacon Hotel just up the road, this place is invariably overlooked which does it a bit of an injustice. I found this a great place to settle down and enjoy some good local beer and would definitely call again the next time I’m in the area.

This is a solid back street Holden's pub that has managed to include a small Thai food operation, an unusual and bold move by Holden. It's a much more standard pub than the famous Black Country ones but still worthwhile. I was surprised and delighted to find that the 7.2% Holden's Old Ale was on sale and a real snip at £2.50 a pint. All four of the other standard Holden's beers were present. After a while there was a large bang from outside. A police car had collided with another car and had ended up on the pavement outside the pub with the blue lights still flashing. By the time I left there was an ambulance, more police cars and they were closing the road off. A memorable visit!