The Seven Stars, Falmouth

Smart exterior but very run down inside with peeling plaster and very basic, but almost saved by the character. With a bit of TLC it could be nice. Tables at the front on the main square.

The Seven Stars is a decent looking pub that is in the middle of Falmouth. Once inside it looks very scruffy,my wife refused to sit down in the pub so went outside to sit on one of the picnic benches. There is a narrow oblong shaped room to the front which has a stone floor,there is very basic bench seating,there is a separate room to the rear which is square shaped and has a few pew seats. There was a decent choice of real ales served from Barrel's,we had a pint and a half of Bass,which went down well outside,while watching the world go by,the other real ales i noted were St Austell Lucky 7,Sharps Atlantic and Skinners Lushingtons. We did it once and never did a revisit over the week. The toilets were also very scruffy. Why do some of these top real ale pub have to be so scruffy. Pub visited 12/8/2017

One of the oldest-school pubs I've been in for a long while (and all the better for that). The façade doesn't deceive, and the compact front bar is as traditional as anybody could have hoped for back in the 1950s. However, the smaller back room, with a hatch through to the servery, harks back to an even earlier age. All real ales are served on gravity, including the regular Bass, two from Sharp's and one from St Austell; but I went for the Padstow Windjammer (£3.25, which might have been a bit warm from a smaller cask without a cooling jacket, but was in fine condition).

Set slightly back from the road on one side of a small square in the town centre, the Seven Stars is a lovely unspoilt ale house, still serving beers straight from the barrel. You enter into a corridor with a nice old Bass sign on display and a small serving hatch to the bar on the left hand side, which I assume was a former bottle and jug. A door immediately to the left leads into the front Public Bar - a long shallow space with the servery along the rear wall. The room has a stone floor with a couple of table-less banquettes along the front wall and a single table made from an old cable spool in the bay window at the far end of the room, served by a decent curved banquette. The bar has a white wood counter front and the top of the counter appears to be a little warped at one end - the surface certainly didn't seem flush - suggesting it has probably been in-situ for a good many years. The bar back is decorated with the ephemera of many years of pub trading, including some ancient looking tankards, bowls, salvers, whiskey boxes and a fine carriage clock which is apparently set to GMT all year round. From the ceiling, hundreds of key-rings have been suspended from the beams and a bank note collection and string of fairy lights can also be found nearby. The room has been decorated with plenty of Bass memorabilia, various old photos, mirrors and CAMRA award certificates, whilst on the end wall, a small fireplace stands, looking like it gets some god use in the colder months. The corridor leads on to a small rear room, almost snug-like, which houses the majority of the pub's seating options mainly in the form of smart button backed benches and sturdy low stools. There's another nice fireplace on the rear wall and a few paintings to brighten up the walls. There are no distractions from TV screens, slot machines or piped music, just the pleasant buzz of chatter from a modest early Tuesday evening crowd. The plentiful Bass memorabilia throughout the pub is a nod towards their famed house beer, still seemingly their most popular ale, with all but one customer ordering a pint of it whilst I was there. The antique stillage system behind the bar also had Skinners Lushingtons, Sharps Special and St Austell Ella racked up as well as a few more casks that weren't ready to come on yet. I obviously had to try the Bass (£3.20) which was an outstanding pint and welcome reminder of what a great beer it can be in the right hands. A number of ciders were also available, either from handpulls on the bar or polypins. Falmouth has a good mix of pubs for a town of its size, where modern craft beer bars rub shoulders with lively Quayside boozers and familiar chain pubs, but the Seven Stars stands out as the town's top traditional ale house, rightly recognised on CAMRA's National Inventory. I loved the ambience in here - the buzz of conversation creates a pub atmosphere that really can't be beaten - and thought the beer was superb. This one is well worth visiting for any number of reasons and was one of the highlights of my time in Falmouth.