Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Tag: Great Yarmouth

  • Coach and Horses Public House in Great Yarmouth

    Coach and Horses Public House in Great Yarmouth

    Coach and Horses Public House

    Address: 196/7 Northgate St, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk

    Local Council: Great Yarmouth

    I haven’t yet visited this pub, but maybe sometime soon….. When I do, this text will disappear and my ‘fascinating’ comments about the pub will appear instead.

    For the moment, here’s my list of Good Beer Guide pubs visited. And for anyone interested, which I accept isn’t likely to be many people, my favourite pub so far is the Hop and Vine in Hull. Untappd is a handy place to see where I’ve been recently (and feel free to add me, the more the merrier).

    I also don’t have an interview with anyone from this pub, but if they want to take part then please do contact me. It’ll also be an effort to update this database with pub closures and updates, but I’ll change the details of anywhere that I’m contacted about. I’m updating on a regular basis new pubs and also removing venues which are clearly more restaurants than pubs. And the pub that I’m saddest about closing is Goose Island in London which shut its doors in late 2022…..

    This project is I accept entirely unachievable, namely trying to visit not only every Good Beer Guide pub in the country but having a fair crack of trying to visit as many pubs as I can. But, I have to start somewhere and here is where we’re starting. The image in the photo is from the Phantom Brewery Tap in Reading.

  • Great Yarmouth – Brewer’s Chip Saloon

    Great Yarmouth – Brewer’s Chip Saloon

    And as part of my irregular series on chip options at Great Yarmouth market….. This is the car park end of Yarmouth market and I didn’t know that these two stalls were located here, I thought they were all at the other end of the covered market. Liam was also able to pop over for lunch, despite being very busy building a bridge.

    There was consistently a much longer queue for Brewer’s than their neighbour, which didn’t have any queue at all. There are perhaps three main reasons for this, (i) the chips are much better, (ii) the British just like queueing or (iii) the denizens of Great Yarmouth have noted that the medium chips are 10p cheaper at this stall than their neighbour. My reason for queueing here was the second one, I decided that if other people were queueing that they must know something that I didn’t.

    The chips were £1.30, which seemed very reasonable to me, with the sauce being free of charge. I like this policy as I’m easily pleased with free gestures. I really don’t feel that I’m a chips connoisseur, since they mostly all taste the same to me. The ones here were perhaps a little crunchier than their nearby rivals, but they were entirely satisfactory to me. I’m not sure I’d say they were any better or worse than other stalls, but each to their own.

    The service was also friendly and unhurried, although the staff member was going at a decent pace to serve customers. They didn’t accept cards, but otherwise their Covid handling seemed pretty perfect to me, with a sizeable Perspex screen. So, all rather lovely for £1.30 and I think I might come back here again.

  • Great Yarmouth – Docwra’s Chip Stall

    Great Yarmouth – Docwra’s Chip Stall

    I’m not sure what the best strategy is in terms of choosing between the various chip stalls at Great Yarmouth market. I decided on the practical solution of going under the covered section of the market to try and avoid any seagull related attacks. The owner of this stall, Norma Docwra, said in the local press a couple of years ago that the seagulls were becoming an increasing problem and she’s not wrong. There was one seagull who hopped along at one stage, but I followed that advice of staring at it, and it merrily hopped off. Rarely do wild animals or birds do what I expect, so this pleased me. Anyway, I digress.

    There’s a plethora of chip coverings at the stall, including curry sauce, chicken gravy, onion gravy, cheese, BBQ sauce, beans, mayo, burger sauce, spicy chilli sauce, sweet chilli sauce and chilli con care. Or, if those don’t appeal, there are sachets of tomato ketchup and brown sauce for 10p each.

    I went for topless chips, just adulterated in a positive way (I’m not sure that’s a thing) with salt and vinegar. I’m not one for large portions of chips, so went for the £1.20 option which proved to be entirely sufficient. Ignoring the toppings options, I like stalls where there’s just one product for sale, it makes things much easier.

    The chips were fine, not greasy, sufficiently plentiful for the money, hot and at the appropriate hot temperature. I’m not really a chip expert, so I don’t know what they were cooked in. There were two staff members, the younger one was happy and bubbly (the other one was the owner and she was serving another customer, so she might have been just as happy and bubbly but I wasn’t paying attention) so there was a friendly feel to the whole arrangement.

    All rather lovely and excellent value at £1.20. Based on this, and for comparison purposes, I might start a little research survey of other Great Yarmouth food options at the market.

  • Great Yarmouth – Tombstone Saloon

    Great Yarmouth – Tombstone Saloon

    Tucked away a little, although within a short walk of the main market-place is this Good Beer Guide listed pub in Great Yarmouth. Calling itself a saloon, not least because of its American west theme, it’s the bar section of the Tombstone Brewery. It’s an under-stated location from the exterior and until about ten years ago, this was the home of the restaurant Cafe Nova. Indeed, some of the decoration from that period as a tapas restaurant remains today as the bar area.

    A decent selection of real ale, particularly given the trading limitations that all pubs currently have. The pub was also busy, with someone at nearly every table, and there was a relaxed atmosphere in the pub. There were numerous tempting options visible at the bar, not least the scampi fries, with a range of different beer types.

    I opted for the Tindall Stout, which was reasonably priced at £3.30. There are a couple of stouts produced by the Tindall Brewery, a small–scale local producer from nearby, in Seething, but the board didn’t name which one it was. I’m guessing though that it was the caramel stout and I came to that conclusion because I thought it tasted of caramel…. It seemed a little weak in body at first, but the aftertaste was rich and moreish, so a decent beer.

    The wild west theme hasn’t been taken too far, but it adds character and atmosphere to the surroundings. The service was polite and the pub staff were following the current guidelines in terms of taking customer details. A fair few pubs aren’t doing this very well at the moment, and although I can’t say it overly bothers me, it does show a level of professionalism. It’s not the largest of pubs either, so I can imagine that it gets relatively busy during a warm balmy day in summer. Well, I like to think that tourists come here in a reasonable number anyway.

    There wasn’t really anything exceptional about my visit that I can add, although that doesn’t mean there was any particular problem. But the customer service didn’t engage beyond the minimum, so there’s not much more I can add about that. I would say though that it felt like the kind of pub where you’d soon be known after visiting a few times, it had that sort of character to it. The selection of beers and ciders, as well as spirits, is also well above the average and so I can see why it’s listed in the Good Beer Guide.

  • Great Yarmouth – Name Origin

    Great Yarmouth – Name Origin

    Since I’m on a roll with these name origins, and I want a relatively complete list for Norfolk, back to The Concise Oxford Dictionary Of English Placenames.

    Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. Gernemwa in Domesday Book, Gernemuta Magna in 1254. The mouth of the River Yare.

    The Magna means great, which is solely to avoid confusion with Southtown on the southern side of the river, formerly known as Little Yarmouth. The word origin is different from Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight, but the word Great has probably persisted to differentiate those two towns. ‘Garienis’ is the Saxon word for the River Yare, so it started with something like ‘Garmud’ and that ‘d’ at the end was pronounced as ‘th’.

  • London – British Museum (Ship Tavern, Great Yarmouth)

    London – British Museum (Ship Tavern, Great Yarmouth)

    I usually visit the British Museum three or four times a year, something which is a little difficult to do with the current virus situation, primarily because it’s shut. However, they’ve placed hundreds of thousands of images on their web-site, so this will have to do me for the moment. The images can be used non-commercially, as long as the British Museum is credited. So, this is their credit.

    I’m not sure that there’s much advertising from pubs at the turn of the nineteenth century surviving, especially not in two languages. But this advertising card in English and German is now in the collection of the British Museum and they acquired it in 1960 from the estate of Sir Ambrose Heal. Heal was a collector of trade cards, and had a large number in his collection, as well being the chairman of Heal’s on Tottenham Court Road, which is still trading.

    The Ship Tavern is though sadly no longer trading, it lasted from the 1760s until 2010, being located next to Row 84 in the town. But there’s something quite captivating about how multi-national the docks and port of Great Yarmouth once were. Indeed, in 1797 this pub had welcomed (I use welcomed slightly loosely here….) Dutch naval prisoners from the Battle of Camperdown. As for William Ungleman who produced these trade cards, he ran the pub between September 1809 and 1819, but I have no idea where he went after that.

  • Great Yarmouth – Community Garden

    Great Yarmouth – Community Garden

    I haven’t noticed this before, it’s a community garden which is located outside of Great Yarmouth’s library. Once this space was occupied by Rows 104 and 106, but they were destroyed by bombings during the Second World War and this area was remodelled. The hand-crafted totem pole is part of the community garden’s art project, designed alongside the sculptor Jason Parr and installed here in 2011.

    This is an interesting survival, it’s the former sign above the entrance to the Corn Hall on Howard Street, which opened in October 1871. The building was used by a corn merchants and a general sale room before it was demolished in the 1960s due to road widening.

  • Great Yarmouth – Mariners

    Great Yarmouth – Mariners

    It’s been an omission of mine that I haven’t visited this Good Beer Guide listed pub in Great Yarmouth before, a traditional pub located just a short walk from the town’s market place. This can’t be the easiest pub to make work, as Great Yarmouth hasn’t been the most prosperous of towns in recent years, and the Mariners is a little tucked away, so the owners have done well to keep it going. Although the pub has been trading since the early nineteenth century, I can’t find much mention of its history on-line.

    The interior was pleasant and there was a selection of around eight or nine beers available, with a variety of different types. I really can’t resist the Plum Porter from Titanic Brewery, even though I’m aware that it’s becoming increasingly ubiquitous. Reasonably priced, excellent flavour and at the appropriate temperature, so all very lovely.

    The fire was going, which added nicely to the atmosphere in the pub, which was otherwise quiet. I suspect that most customers are regular, but there wasn’t a cliquey and unwelcoming feel, so it seemed non-judgemental. There’s no food offered, so the main draw is the wide selection of real ales and the traditional pub atmosphere.

    Some kind soul decided they’d try and do some damage to the pub by leaving a review on TripAdvisor saying:

    “Old Man’s Pub! Went here for drinks before a meal – not really the sort of ambience we wanted and as we were dressed up to the nines we stood out like sore thumbs!”

    I’m not quite sure what the pub is supposed to do about that, destroy its ambience to deliver a different and generic atmosphere? Although Craft Union seem to be doing that in some pubs, so perhaps that is the future…. Anyway, I hope they don’t change, another well deserved entry into the Good Beer Guide.

  • Great Yarmouth – Forged Chain Sculpture

    The forged chain sculpture at the entrance to St. George’s Park in Great Yarmouth, designed by blacksmith artists Nigel Barnett and Ros Newman. It was installed in 2008 and represent chains from harbour with seagulls flying above them. It’s a pleasant addition to the area around the park, although I’m not entirely sure that the town needed any reminder of seagulls, but there we go….

  • Great Yarmouth – Row 46

    This is one of the longest of the rows and is named after Sewell family who had a grocer’s shop here, which explains the alternative name of Grocer’s Row. The Sewells were Quakers and the last owner of the shop was Edward Sewell who died in 1870.

    The old way of identifying row numbers and although this one seems to have been repainted recently, there are some examples on other rows which I’d guess are from the nineteenth century.

    The row is also home to the entrance from the Market Place of the Back to Backs public house, which is the remaining section of the now closed Prince Regent pub.