Victoria Hotel, Cleveleys Town Centre, Thornton-Cleveleys

Jumbo Sam's housed in an impressive looming 1930's roadside pub with a CAMRA Inventory listing. Usual many-shades-of-brown decor, you could be in 1951 here. Open-plan feel. Points of interested include large half-octagonal banquette snugs and some lovely baffled leaded and stained windows. Cask OBB on (NBSS 3) and also had a Dark Mild because why not – I never see it down south. Fairly quiet on a late Saturday afternoon, the nearby Spoons has trumped its low-price business model. I liked it in here though, a comfortable codgers’ pub.

Only thing to add to the 2 review below. £1.34 for a pint of Sam Smiths. £1.34 unbelievable and excellent taste.

Called in first time in many years just as it was but it was spotlessly clean it was Saturday tea time good few in bar staff were pleasant had a very good pint of Sam's old brewery bitter which was on form will call often now were back in the area

This is a huge inter-war era pub and hotel on most bus routes through Cleveleys and a five minute walk from the tram line. The pub has been built on a grand scale, presumably to meet the demand from hotel residents, visitors to town and locals from the large surrounding residential developments. All this could mean that the pub has that depressing air of being too large for purpose that afflicts many larger pubs, but the place was doing a good Saturday night trade when I popped in and much of the seating was taken up by a notably older customer base. Entering through the corner door of this L shaped building, you find yourself in a huge lounge with the bar sited to the rear in the crook of the L and vast seating areas fanning out to either side. Low, modern partitioning screens create a walkway from the front door to the bar and other such screens have been used sparingly to break the space up a little. The lounge is carpeted with some nice leather button backed banquettes around the perimeter and standard and tub chair seating elsewhere, all upholstered with particularly nice patterned material. The windows have dimple effect glass, each with a stained glass insert and the room has an awful lot of dark wood pillars and beams to create an old drinking hall feel. I spotted a couple of stone fireplaces at either end of the room, each with a large tapestry hung above to great visual effect. Bizarrely, there was a slot machine opposite the bar, which looked very out of place, but aside from this, I didn't spot any other such distractions. There is apparently another entrance into a public bar, but I somehow managed to miss this, perhaps because I thought there couldn't be any more to this pub than the huge lounge. The pub is run by the Samuel Smith Brewery, so the full range of their products could be found at the bar. I gave the Old Brewery Bitter a try, a beer I don't usually get on with, but I actually thought it was pretty good, if perhaps a little too cold. This is a pretty spectacular pub that is worth taking a look at if you are interested in well preserved historical interiors. I found the large drinking spaces a bit impersonal and not quite to my style and the beer is nothing you won't have tried before, but I'm glad I visited and would recommend a visit to anyone in the area.