Hotwells pubs

You can tell that I’m recovering from my flu bug - I decided to do this week’s blog on my neighborhood pubs... probably only the first installment on this topic! According to “Old Inns of Bristol” (my source of information for much of the material presented here), as of 2005 there were 771 public houses in Bristol - one for everyone 600 people. This number is down substantially from 1750, when there were 850 pubs (and approximately 100,000 people, or one pub for every 117 people)... but I’ll limit myself primarily to  pubs around my neighborhood of Hotwells and the west end of the Floating Harbor. Here, too, the pub count has diminished dramatically from the good old days - whereas there were apparently two dozen pubs on Hotwells Road in 1895, I’m now limited to a mere 6 pubs that I consider to be within my immediate neighborhood (a number that increases to at least 9 or 10 if I expand to within a ten minute walk)...

First some background and vocabulary. A British pub (public house) is different from most American bars, in that it is really a social gathering place - and everyone has their ‘local’. Old-fashioned pubs are often quite cosy; many have games (scrabble, chess cribbage) parked in a corner - it’s not uncommon to see a group of people playing cards or a board game, settled in for the evening. Pubs may be “free houses” - which means that they are established independently of any specific brewery - or they may be sponsored, or owned, by a brewery. British pubs all feature colorful painted signs. Apparently this is a legacy from a 1393 law enacted by Richard II and designed to make pubs identifiable for inspectors, tax collectors etc. At that time, many people were illiterate, so that the signs featured pictures as well as words. Pub signs now seem to be an art form... reminds me of my first real encounter with pub signs, in the Fells Point (dockyards) region of Baltimore. Seems like pub sign painting would be a fun career (I did look on line and find at least one such pub sign artist in Bristol!). Some pubs also boast a “cask marque”, a fairly new designation that is awarded to pubs who serve their cask-conditioned ales properly (proper temperature, quality, freshness).

Now to the neighborhood pubs. I’ll start with two of the oldest, neither of which I’ve visited, one because it’s now shut (the Plume of Feathers) and one biker bar (the Mardyke). It’s too bad the Plume of Feathers closed, as it had apparently been in business since 1775! The Mardyke goes back to 1865, at which time it was located immediately across the street from the Mardyke ferry, which transported workers back and forth across the Floating Harbor to the dockyards (an obvious location for a pub...).

Another pub that traces its history back to the days when Hotwells was the location of numerous working dockyards is the Nova Scotia, which advertises itself as “circa 1811”. My book speculates that the name records the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, in which France ceded Nova Scotia to England. The mahogany counter in the pub was apparently originally built for a ship but was the wrong shape, so ended up in the pub. The interior is decorated with faded charts and old photographs... it’s a little dingy now but has outside seating in the summer, with views across to the row of quaint “Dock Cottages” and down the Cumberland Basin and locks at the end of the harbor. It’s still a local pub for dockyard workers.

From the Nova Scotia it’s a short walk through the Underfall shipyard [the "underfall" refers to the spillover from the harbor to the "cut", or Avon River diversion] The Cottage Inn. This pub gets its name because its early Victorian building was originally the cottage that belonged to Bristol’s harbor master. Now it is noteworthy (from my perspective) because it is right next to the Baltic Wharf Sailing Club, and therefore the post-race hangout for the dinghy sailors. Like the Nova Scotia, the Cottage Inn has lots of wonderful old photos on the walls - it also has nice outdoor seating that is occupied in all except the most inclement conditions.

Circling back to my (north) side of the Floating Harbor one finds the Merchant Arms. This pub is probably named for the Merchants Dock of 1765, which used to occupy the location of my housing development (Rownham Mead). The eponymous merchants certainly refers to the “Merchant Venturers”, a very old Bristol merchants guild that, among other things, funded John Cabot’s Newfoundland voyage, and promoted colonization of North America. They still control a number of charity organizations in Bristol. The Merchant Arms is owned by the Bath Ales brewery, with its distinctive hare logo (and numerous hare puns in their beer names!). It’s a nice old-fashioned pub - two tiny rooms (one used to be the public bar, the other the lounge bar, back when such distinctions were made) and pressed tin walls painted a mustard yellow; frosted windows sporting the Bath hare logo; random paintings on the wall; a stack of games in the corner.

Closest to home is the Pump House, which is really more a first class restaurant than a traditional pub. The building was constructed in 1871 to house the machinery that controlled the gates of the locks. It’s beautifully restored inside, has beautiful historic photographs and has great outdoor seating for nice weather. The food is excellent, and it offers a range of beers and wine (including, usually, Bath ales but also beer from the Cheddar Gorge and other nearby environs). It has a cosy room with couches for game playing; we have also discovered that on alternate Wednesday evenings the knitting group meets here! They offer homemade bread, fresh eggs, and various preserves, pickles, and dried mushrooms for sale.

And last but not least, the Grain Barge. This is the pub that I consider my ‘local’, primarily because it’s the most Eugene-like establishment around. It lies on the other side of my little blue bridge, and across the street from the Mardyke. It’s on an old grain barge that is moored at the edge of the harbor, and is owned by the Bristol Beer Factory. The BBF makes several American style hopped beers - my favorite is Southville Hop (the closest thing I’ve found in Bristol to a PNW-style IPA), though they also sell an Independence Ale that is fairly hoppy. The atmosphere is casual and the ambience low key, particularly in the late afternoon when the low angle sun pours in the windows before the lights around the harbor slowly start to come on and reflect different colors on the water.