The Wig & Pen, Northampton

Blessed with a fairly prominent town centre location, this is a pleasant historic pub with an elongated L-shaped layout. A narrow, lower front space offers hard pew seating before giving way to the bar area, where an L-shaped, dark wood counter occupies the right-hand side of the room, with limited seating to the left and through a more spacious rear space. Most of this seating comes in the form of low stools and more pews, all serving copper topped tables. Some nice dark wood beams cross the ceiling and further back there’s a large raised section of ceiling that looks like it should have a skylight in it, but is currently blocked off. Some decent wood panelling contrasts a plain paint scheme, enlivened with old paintings, brewery adverts and mirrors, which cover much of the wall space throughout. There was also a large Tv screen on the back wall showing highlights of the previous day’s football whilst indie tunes played in the background. Out the back, there’s a decent split-level patio garden with a neon ‘Wig & Pen’ sign on the back wall, loads of solid garden furniture, plenty of shelter and at least one more screen showing the football. There are no less than eight handpulls on the bar, but three of these had ‘Coming Soon’ labels next to fairly mainstream cask brands, whilst a fourth was dispensing a real cider. This left four ales on the go - Dark Star Hophead, Taylors Golden Best, Mad Goose Purity Gold and Youngs Ordinary. A super-friendly barmaid pulled me a decent drop of the Hophead, which I enjoyed supping whilst listening to the local’s dissecting the football coverage. This is a pretty down to earth town centre boozer, seemingly popular with a slightly older clientele, which offers comfortable seating in a proper pub environment alongside a decent selection of well-kept cask ales. There was nothing here that really blew my mind, but I enjoyed the friendly service and simplicity of the place and would suggest it’s worth a quick look if you’re crawling the town centre.

Traditional town centre pub, quite busy early Saturday lunchtime with a good mix of locals, shoppers and beer tourists. Its been well described numerous times below, plenty of beer choice, I had a nice pint of Silverstone Pit Stop. A good official start to a Northampton pub crawl.

Old beamed pub , long thin front lounge leading up to bar area and final larger area giving an L-shape. Copper tables, distressed paint work, settles. Friendly service and a nice place all round.

The Wig & Pen is a decent looking pub which still has its old Mansfield brewery signage outside. Once inside there is a an L shaped room which runs to the rear,the rear area is up one step where the bar is,there are normal tables and chairs to the front and some pew seats and small stool further down the room,it is carpeted throughout and seemed quite comfortable and cosy. There was a good choice of real ales on the bar,i had a drink of Elgoods Cambridge Bitter,which went down well,the other real ales noted were ,Hop Back Citra,RCh Old Slug Porter Adnams Ghost Ship,London Pride,Black Sheep Bitter and Black Hole Cosmic. There was quiet background music playing and the pub was doing good trade on our Saturday dinner visit. I quite liked this pub. Pub visited 1/10/2016

Jacobean-era pub with attractive etched glass windows at the pub’s front. Three tiered interior in what is essentially a long narrow room branching off into an L-shape with a fairly impressive rear courtyard patio area beyond. Some old stylings inside - pub carpet, wood fittings, copper-top tables. The rear area hosts al fresco footy. Good natured locals on our two visits, especially so on the late evening where it functions as a ‘plub’ for the more grown-up element of the weekend funsters (so beware loud music etc though the bouncers were notably friendly). 8 pumps with 7 on, a good mix of micro and regional. Went for Elgoods Bitter and Great Oakley Delapre Dark and got excellent beer for my money although note that it is one of the more expensive pubs in NN1. It should be a default visit if you can drag yourself away from the Malt Shovel/Phipps axis.

This is an old long and narrow pub with the bar at the end. It wasn't overly busy on my Friday afternoon visit but certainly wasn't quiet. I counted eight hand pumps at the front of the bar and three at the side. The front eight had Nethergate Old Growler, Adnam's Ghost Ship, Old Speckled Hen, Slater's Queen Bee, Elgood's Golden Newt & Black Dog Mild, Potbelly Best and one unused that was being changed. The three side pumps had Fuller's London Pride & Oliver's Island and Greene King IPA. Apart from two beers all of these were from the old regional or long established brewers. I thought I would try the Old Growler which was in good nick but cost the ridiculous price of £4.20. I have to admit that I had failed to spot the 10% CAMRA discount but even at £3.78 it's still over the top for the Midlands. I didn't see anything special about this pub at all and just left feeling I'd been ripped off.