Cornfield Garage (JD Wetherspoon), Eastbourne

One of a couple of branches of Wetherspoon's in Eastbourne, I'd visited the other one (the London & County) on my last visit to the town in 2019. This one is a little further away from the station, although still quite close. The London & County looks a bit of a dive from the outside, but I recall it having some nice features inside. The Cornfield Garage is the other way round. It looks fairly inviting from the outside, but once inside, you could be in any other branch of the chain up and down the land. The two main positive takeaways I had from this pub were the presence of some very convenient ground floor toilets and probably the best selection of real ales in Eastbourne. Although, this was undoubtedly aided by the current Wetherspoon's real ale festival. According to the pumpclips on display, the selection was Greene King Abbot, Ruddles Best, Sharp's Doom Bar, Steel & Oak Easy Stout, Acorn 2 Decades, Wychwood Kinggoblin, Robinson's Trooper Fear of the Dark, Black Sheep Finisher, Daleside Monkey Wrench, Rudgate Vanilla Mild & Sambrook's Powerhouse Porter. However, I'm not convinced that all of these beers were actually available. Wetherspoon's have a habit of displaying pumpclips for beers that aren't actually on. Their app showed a much more limited selection. Once again, this is an Eastbourne pub with no real cider. I opted for the Vanilla Mild, which was fairly uninspiring and was consumed in a noisy and boisterous drinking environment. In summary, I think the London & County is the better branch of 'spoon's in town and I can see why it is that one that consistently makes the Good Beer Guide, whilst this one has never featured.

Official site of Cornfield Garage (JD Wetherspoon) - www.jdwetherspoon.com

Official site of Cornfield Garage (JD Wetherspoon) - www.jdwetherspoon.com

This is a fairly uninspiring Spoons altogether. It has no interesting features at all and despite having 15 handpumps it sports a pretty dire selection of beers. Despite this on my 11:00 visit there were lots of older folk in and not really the same Daytime Spoons Brigade you see in London. There were just three "interesting" beers, Long Man American Pale Ale, Adnams / Stone Double IPA (which currently seems to be on sale at every single Spoons) and Arundel Gold. The Long Man beer was clipped on three pumps then GK Abbot, GK Ruddles, Adnam's Broadside and Young's Special were all doubled up. The remaining two had London Pride and Doombore. I went for the Long Man beer (£2.55) which was in reasonable nick but not up to the standard of the beers in the London and County which is a five minute walk away. It's also expensive compared to most London suburb Spoons, but 30p less than the Long Man Old Man tried minutes earlier in the London and County.

As the name suggests, the Cornfield Garage is housed in what was originally 3 shops and a car showroom. The building dates from 1925 and has been a ‘Spoons since 1999. Confusingly, the pub is also known as the Earl of Burlington in some quarters although there is no signage or indications of this at the pub itself. The interior is larger than it appears from the outside with a raised section opposite the bar, an extended rear section under a large skylight at the rear and a partly decked patio at the back. The décor is largely ‘Spoons by numbers, pleasant enough although the large air conditioning pipe snaking its way across the ceiling doesn’t exactly add to the aesthetics. I’d like to say it does everything that you expect from a Wetherspoons but I have to say they had the poorest selection of ales I have encountered in a mainstream Wetherspoons with little thought to guest beers. Present across the 15 hand pumps were Ruddles County, Abbott, Abbott Reserve, Adnams Broadside and Hobgoblin. On the plus side, breakfast was more forthcoming than the London & County which was my primary reason for calling in although I was lucky to grab a table even at the ungodly hour of 11am. It’s certainly not the greatest ‘Spoons on the planet and given what was available at the pumps, I would think twice about returning purely for the beers.