New Inn, Telford

This pub is only accessible if you have paid an entrance fee to the museum: in the region of £25!

Traditional corner pub, rebuilt in the Blists Hill Victorian Town museum. Period (circa 1900) furniture and decor in both the Bar and Tap Room, and also in the smaller back room housing the piano. One modern feature is the rear patio beer garden. Banks's Mild and Bitter (£3.50), plus Archer Amber as a guest, available from a pair of handpumps on both bar counters.

This is an unusual one as it is part of the Blists Hill Victorian living museum! The building is a genuine example of a Victorian era pub as it was originally situated on the corner of Green Lane and Hospital Street in the Birchills area of Walsall but was taken down brick by brick between 1981-82 and rebuilt on the corner of the main high street of the museum. The classic interior has three rooms, a public bar, a tap room (lounge) and a smoke room (snug). The small public bar is in the front left corner of the building and has a small dark wood counter in the back right corner, bare wood floor, fixed wood settles along the left and front walls either side of the street corner entrance. In the back left wall is a door which leads to the small smoke room, this has a quarry tiled floor, a lovely Victorian cast iron fire place with patterned tile surround in the back wall, a piano against the front wall and a serving hatch in the right wall from the bar in the tap room. Down the full length of the right hand side of the building is the tap room, this has a second entrance from the street with a tiny off sales counter, a dark wood bar counter in the middle of the left wall, a medieval style moulded stone fire place with cast grate in the middle of the right wall opposite the counter, fixed wood settles and a bare wood floor. There is a door at the back left of the tap room which provides further access to the smoke room and another door in the back wall that leads out to a cobbled glass roofed veranda which has a second piano and an outside toilet block. Beyond this is a large enclosed and cobbled court yard with traditional cast iron garden furniture and an occupied chicken run at the far end away from the building. All of the ground floor windows on the two street sides of the pub are beautifully etched. Regular ales are Marston Pedigree, Banks’s Bitter and Mild. I only had time for a Mild as we had to get round the whole museum which is spread out and pretty big. The Mild was good enough if nothing special. It’s a little disappointing to see modern pump clips which I think detracts slightly from the otherwise authentic traditional décor. A fantastic working man’s street corner pub with loads of character. In the smoke room there were two middle aged men in Victorian working class costumes who were singing old English music hall songs and playing the piano, they were encouraging any visitors to join in to create a magnificent atmosphere which could be heard as you walked up the high street towards the pub. If this isn’t your kind of thing and you prefer a quiet drink then be assured that they only perform at certain times of the day. It should be pointed out that entrance to the museum costs around £15 for an adult before you can visit this pub, so technically a pint could cost you over £18 if you were just visiting to tick this pub off a list!