Pubs

The Hatchett Inn at the end of Denmark Street, just off Bristol’s main downtown core, has been in continuous operation as a pub (and possibly other enterprises involving drinking, bedrooms, barmaids……who can know?)  since 1606. The entrance door, barely 6 feet high, is  set into a traditional Elizabethan timbered exterior, and is so layered with centuries of  gnarled black paint that you can’t see any trace of the stout oak door beneath. The rooms within, low ceilinged, with small fireplaces scattered in every corner, don’t flow, they shudder from one to the next, through archways held up by massive oak beams wrested from old ships, or other, even older buildings.The floor is made of  limestone slabs here, oak boards there, some rooms with a bit of slate, others with an indeterminate surface now obscured by centuries of footfalls. We were in a pub in  Burford once where I remarked on the unusual low sheen floor finish, a warm natural greyish brown look I had never seen before,  and asked what the floor was made of. “Dirt” said the barkeep. “Gets like that when you sweat on it, spill ale on it, then walk on it for a thousand years.”

Bristol is barely an hour and a half from London today by high speed train, but it was very far from London in the 16th and 17th centuries, several days ride by horse,  even longer by horse and carriage. A good place for legal trade and an even better spot for……… questionable business of every kind. Blackbeard the Pirate drank at the Hatchett. while Robert Louis Stevenson reportedly wrote “Treasure Island” at the Hole in the Wall, the  local pub across the bridge from my flat, where I go for a pint from time to time, and sometimes dinner.

For centuries, there were always a lot of sailors on shore leave in Bristol, and the city reflected that “clientelle”.

Today, the sailors are gone, the downtown has obviously gentrified, but the old haunts remain, and you can still have a barkeep pull you a pint in a place saturated with character and the inescapable smell of time.

Stay away from anything with “ye” in the name, or with a substantial level of cuteness: you can be sure “The Pipe and Slippers”is a fake, and “The Smoke and Mirror” doesn’t even deserve comment.

But if you walk into a place where the ceilings seem too low, the floor is crooked and you can’t tell what it’s made of, and the doorways look ready to fall down, relax, sit down, and order a pint of anything.

You’ll love it.