CAMPAIGN FOR REAL ALE

WEST MIDLANDS - Smethwick, Waterloo

National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors Part Two

Shireland Road, Smethwick, B66 4RQ

Tel: 0121 558 0198

Public Transport: Railway Station: Smethwick Rolfe Street

Listed Status: Grade II*

View this pub on a local map

CURRENTLY CLOSED. Built as a flagship pub-hotel in 1907 for Mitchells & Butlers whose brewery was nearby. Their architects, Wood & Kendrick, whom they often employed, provided a lavish Edwardian Baroque front for the corner site - M&B; terracotta survives on the fascia and high gables. The astonishing features of the interior of this pub is the tilework. It covers the walls of the public bar - and even the ceiling. There are bands of green, blue, cream and salmon with highly decorative Victorian motifs and descending wreaths. The counter and bar back are excellent, original work. If you look at the floor pattern closely you can see how there was once a partition across the middle of the bar. You can also work out how there was a screened-off outdoor area on the left. Behind the bar, a central lobby with service via a hatch-counter has a staircase and fully-tiled walls and ceilings in same style as the bar; off this is a modernised lounge.

But the really spectacular room is the Grill Room in the basement: this was (and still is) a restaurant and features walls and ceilings extravagantly tiled with a frieze of galleons. On one side is the original servery and on the other a cast-iron grill - this superb Edwardian survivor is still fired up and used to cook the grills. The pub also doubled as a commercial hotel and at the top of the stairs you will find a small cubicle that was used by a night-watchman.

The pub is currently closed (December 2010).