CAMPAIGN FOR REAL ALE

YORKSHIRE (EAST) - Beverley, White Horse

National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors Part Two

5 Hengate, Beverley, HU17 8BN

Tel: 01482 861973

Web site: www.nellies.co.uk

Draught Beer & Cider: Samuel Smith's Old Brewery Bitter

Public Transport: Railway Station: Beverley

Pub Food: Meals

Listed Status: Grade II*

View this pub on a local map

Something of a Yorkshire institution, "Nellie's" is a "must-see" vernacular gem which has genuine old-fashioned ambience. A one-time coaching house, it has evolved into a warren of stone-flagged and wood-floored rooms, still with gas lighting and warmed in winter by blazing fires in the old hearths. It takes its popular nickname from Nellie Collinson, whose family acquired the pub in 1927 and who was its long-serving and redoubtable licensee until the 1970s.

Current owners, Samuel Smith's brewery, took over in 1976 and have treated their precious acquisition with some respect, confining their alterations to constructing a proper servery in the main bar (with some reason perhaps, as Nellie made do with a simple table!) and to forming a new - some would say, over-wide - opening to the front 'dart room'. They also brought the old semi-private kitchen into more regular pub use. A new extension has been added too, but the parlour, snug, and entrance corridors from Hengate remain gloriously untouched.