Pubs in Woolston

Woolston is an area on the east bank of the Itchen. It was mainly rural until respectable houses were built in the mid to late 1800s mainly for the staff working at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Netley. Over the years the spaces between these houses have been filled in with an attractive hotchpotch of houses from late Victorian to early 21st century. The banks of the Itchen were home to the Spitfire factory, until it was destroyed in a German air raid; and ship building, until that closed in 2004. These former industrial sites have been converted to residential use, so Woolston is now mainly residential, with a local high street.

Woolston shops

The pubs mainly cater to the locals, offering little in way of character or amenities for those outside the area. A few have tried offering food with limited success. That a pub has served food on one visit does not mean it will serve it on the next, so anyone planning a pub crawl are advised not to rely on any pub having food unless they contact the pub in advance to check if food is still being served. A pub crawl in this area is best viewed as a suburban crawl of modest local pubs. The only pub that is likely to attract outside interest, is Olaf's Tun, as that is a micro pub, serving a range of beers made in trendy American styles (craft beer).  Miller's Pond is a Wadworth's pub serving a range of decent traditional cask beers. The Yacht has potential, but the freshness of the guest beer is variable, and currently (June 2017) the owners Ei Publicans (new name for Enterprise Inns) are looking for a landlord.  In May 2017, Mettricks, Southampton's very popular coffee house chain, opened a branch in the troubled Centenary Quay development. This offers three cask beers and a selection of bottled and tinned beer, all from local breweries.

A decent day's pub crawl can be had, starting from Woolston railway station, or the nearby bus station, and first visiting The Cricketers Arms, following the route as marked in the map above, and finishing at the Yacht. Though, be aware of Olaf's Tun's limited opening hours, and be prepared to leave this pub to last. There were originally (and now still are) 12 pubs on this crawl; since first setting it out, two pubs have closed, but two have opened, with the promise of a third if The Trapdoor ever gets its act together. After visiting the Victoria, go straight to the Obelisk - missing out the Ship Inn and Grove Tavern as these are currently closed. The Gardeners Arms is a little out of the way, is not a useful or attractive pub, and can be left out, making this an eleven pub crawl.

1. The Cricketers Arms (formerly The Bridge) 

Portsmouth Road SO19 9AF

Marston's - Children - Meals
12-11 Mon-Sun
WhatPub  Bite

2. Olaf's Tun 

8A Portsmouth Road SO19 9AA

Independent. Limited hours. No meals. No children
Craft beers.
Closed Mon & Tue; 6-10 Wed & Thu; 4-11 Fri; 1-11 Sat; 1-9.30 Sun
WhatPub

2a Vospers (closed)

1 Centenary Plaza SO19 3Ul

Independent. All day. Burger bar. Children.
Marstons cask & keg. Local keg from Unity.

2b Mettricks

8 Centenary Plaza SO19 9UE

Coffee house which offers three keg beers and several bottles. Food. Family friendly.

3. Victoria

Victoria Road SO19 9EF

Independent. Dog friendly. No meals, no children
10-11 Mon-Sat; 12-10.30 Sun
WhatPub   Bite

3a. Ship Inn  (Closed)

Victoria Road  SO19 9DZ

Closed.
Independent.  Children.  Meals
10-11 Mon-Sat; 12-11 Sun
WhatPub   FaceBook 

4. Grove Tavern (Closed)

68-70 Swift Road SO19 9FN

Pub has now been demolished.

5. The Obelisk

108 Obelisk Road SO19 9DP

Independent. Children. Meals vary....
12-11.30 Sun-Thurs. 12-12.30 Fri-Sat
WhatPub

6. The Swan

219 Portsmouth Road SO19 9BG

Independent. Children. No food. Live bands.
4-11 Mon-Thu; 4-Midnight Fri; 2-11 Sat; 12-10.30 Sun
WhatPub 

(7. The Gardeners Arms)

118 Newtown Road SO19 9HR

No cask. No food.

WhatPub

8 . Millers Pond, Sholing

2 Middle Road SO19 8FQ

Wadworth's . Children. Food - variable. 

9. Spike Islander

115 South East Road,  SO19 8JR

Independent. Children. No food. No cask.

10. The Robin Hood

20 South East Road SO19 8TQ

Independent. Children. Sunday meals.
3-11 Mon-Thu; 12-Midnight Fri & Sat; 12-10.30 Sun
WhatPub

11. The Peartree

Peartree Road SO19 7GZ

Independent. No food. No cask.
11-11 Mon-Sat; 12-10.30 Sun
WhatPub 

12. Yacht Tavern

Sea Road SO19 7QZ

Independent. Children. Meals
11-11 Mon-Sat; 12-10.30 Sun
WhatPub  Bite  

***

Pubstops of Southampton

Pubs in Bitterne

A Bitterne pub crawl of nine pubs (purple route) in just over 5 miles, with two possible extensions (orange extension to The Hinkler; green extension to West End Brewery).

Bitterne is a Southampton suburb on the east bank of the river Itchen, bordered by Woolston to the south, the M27 and Hedge End to the east, and Midanbury and Swaythling to the north. The area was mainly estate land until the late Victorian period, when the building of Cobden Bridge, the laying out of the road to Botley, and the road to Burlsden (which used to meet at the Red Lion), and the opening of the railway station near the Celtic/Roman settlement of Clausentum at the bottom of Bitterne Road, encouraged the development of housing. The heart of Bitterne, the shopping area known as Bitterne Village, was bypassed and pedestrianised in the 1980s with the creation of a busy dual carriageway named after the politician Horace King.



 White Swan 



1. The Station - 95 Bullar Road SO18 1GT - John Barras -   Child friendly -  Meals
12-11 Mon-Sun   WhatPub   Bite   ( 02380 334062 )   Rating: 5 (average)

1a.  Bar Marina -  Unit 7A, Kemps Quay, Quayside Road, SO18 1AD - No meals - 
Opens from 3.00pm Mon to Fri, from 12.00 at weekends

2. The Red Lion - 448 Bitterne Road  SO18 5EF  - Ind -  Children in food area at rear - Meals 
11-4, 7-11 Mon- Sat; 12-4, 7-10.30 Sun  WhatPub  Bite  ( 02380 449136 )
(Now a Wetherspoon pub)

3. Fox & Hounds  -  106 Pound Street  SO18 6BP  - Enterprise Inns  - No children  -  No meals
11-11 Mon-Sat; 12-10.30 Sun  WhatPub   Bite  ( 02380 435917 )

4. Humble Plum - Commercial Street SO18 6LY - Wadworths - Child accepted -  Meals
 12-2.30, 5-11 Mon-Thu; 12-11 Fri-Sun  WhatPub   Bite    ( 02380 437577 )   Website 

5. The Bittern (Closed) - 26 Thornhill Park Road  SO18 5TQ - Punch - Child accepted - No meals - No cask
11-11 Mon-Sat; 12-10.30 Sun  WhatPub  Bite   FaceBook 

6. The Hinkler - Hinkler Road SO19 6DF - Marstons - Child accepted - Meals
11-11 Mon-Sat; 12-10.30 Sun  WhatPub   

7. Hare & Hounds (Closed)  - Cheriton Avenue SO18 5JE - Punch - Child accepted - No meals - No cask
12-11 Mon-Sun  WhatPub 

8. West End Brewery - 59 High Street SO30 3DQ - Greene King - Child friendly -  Meals
11-11 Mon-Sun  WhatPub  Bite 

9. The Master Builder  - Wadworth

9a. The Two Brothers - Townhill Way SO18 3RA - Sizzling Pubs (Mitchells & Butlers) - Child friendly - Meals - 9am-Midnight Mon-Sat; 9am-11 Sun (Meals 9am-10) - BITE   WhatPub

9. Big Cheese (Closed) - 28 West End Road  SO18 6PH - Hungry Horse (GK)  - Child friendly -  Meals
 CLOSED   WhatPub   Bite   Website

10. Butcher's Hook - 7 Manor Farm Road  SO18 1NN - Ind - Child tolerated - No meals
6-11 Wed & Thu; 4-11 Fri; 1-11 Sat; 2-10 Sun  WhatPub  Bite  Trip 

11. Bitterne Park - 2 Cobden Avenue SO18 1FX - Enterprise Inns  - Child accepted  - No meals
 11-11 Mon-Fri; 12-11 Sat-Sun  WhatPub 


*Closing times may vary from above at weekends. Pubs will usually close at 10.30 on Sundays, and may stay open longer on Fridays and Saturdays. See WhatPub for exact times.


The pubs in Bitterne are mainly decent enough. Nothing particularly remarkable about most of them, either good or bad. A crawl of around five miles, starting and finishing at Bitterne Station, will take in nine pubs ranging from the run down estate pub with no food or cask beer, the Hare & Hounds, to the trendy micro-pub, the Butcher's Hook, serving craft beer. There's a decent Wadworth's pub, the Humble Plum, which I like, a Hungry Horse family food pub, the Big Cheese, an old fashioned locals pub with character but no food and no children, the Fox & Hounds, and the rather distressed but interesting The Bittern pub, which is struggling to survive, and which may any moment be demolished (or fall down!). The two most interesting pubs are The Bittern and Butcher's Hook; though The Bittern is not the most inviting or pleasant of places to drink in, it does have sufficient character and interest to make it a quirky and worthwhile visit. A shorter crawl can be had which includes all the pubs in the heart of Bitterne, missing out those on the edge which like the Hare & Hounds are run down and not worth visiting, but also misses out on The Bittern, which may be run down, but is quirky. Two extensions are available on the regular crawl, one to a run down estate pub, The Hinkler, which is not worth visiting unless you want to visit every pub in Southampton, and one to the West End Brewery which is an average Greene King family pub. It's charmless but popular. OK to visit if you're in the area, but not really worth making a detour for, unless you want to visit every pub in Southampton.

The main Bitterne pubs - a shorter crawl

Pubstops of Southampton

Southampton Pub Online Guides

southampton-pubs

Southampton-pubs is a listing website. It contains an alphabetical listing of pubs, a map which only shows "featured pubs" (those which have paid a fee - which is only 15 of the approx 175 pubs in Southampton). There is a search facility where you can put in "real ale" or "food" and get a list of pubs which associate with that term - but only the 15 featured pubs turn up, so it's fairly limited. There are no reviews, except for a very few of the featured pubs.

Southampton University Blog Post

"The best pubs and bars to wet your whistle in Southampton"

April 2017 student post about a random selection of bars and pubs in Southampton. Not very helpful.

southampton.co.uk/pubs

Provides an alphabetical list of pubs grouped by area - Woolston, Bitterne, Shirley, etc. There's some basic info, including a map, and most have a photo. People can leave reviews, but few pubs are reviewed. There's about 65 pubs on the site, with seven reviewed.

dailyecho/pubs

Reviews by reporters, which are informative, but not critical, so feel more like adverts. There are  approx 50 pubs reviewed from in and around Southampton, including in Winchester and Romsey.

WhatPub 

CAMRA's guide, written by local CAMRA members with an attempt to be neutral and factual. This is probably the most useful pub guide available on the internet. It makes a genuine attempt to list and review every pub, and presents a range of useful information regarding the food, beer and facilities offered. There are images and maps, and various search functions including by postcode or location, and filter by cask ale (called "real ale" by CAMRA) or real fire or food, or several other features.

GaryReggae 2007    GaryReggae 2013

A blog which, as I am doing, surveyed the pubs in Southampton. Gary did it three times - 2007, 2008, and 2013, but the 2008 survey appears to be no longer available. I like the personal aspect of it, and that for the 2013 guide, it is a blog account rather than a list of details and reviews, so it is very warm, accessible, and inviting. It is also very useful as a record of what the pubs were like in those years.

BeerInTheEvening

BITE was the first major national pub rating site to attract a significant number of reviewers. It started as a London based site created by actual pub goers who knew what other pub goers wanted. It offered the means to create your own pub crawls, and when it launched as a national public site, you could have a beerintheevening email address which simply forwarded to your own email, which was a neat idea. It was vibrant and exciting, and created a community who could communicate with each other via an internal message system, and members would meet up. The site was then sold to a businessman who didn't quite understand the community. He appeared well intentioned, and initially created a forum for members to communicate, but as the site increasingly failed to respond to members needs the forum became more and more hostile towards the owner until the owner closed the forum down. Most of the active members then left en masse to another pub rating site - Pubs Galore, and BITE never recovered. It was sold on again, but reviews have largely dried up. I didn't leave with the others to join the alternative site as I felt I had too many reviews to move. I check out Pubs Galore now and again, but it has not yet caught up with the position BITE was in when the membership left, and so neither site benefited from the split. I still contribute to BITE, but not as regularly as I used to.

PubsGalore

This is the site to which a bunch of the active rating crowd of BITE went to. The quality of the reviews is high, though there are not enough of them, and some reviews are quite old.

Pub History

Gives fairly sparse and random historical details about old pubs, usually just names of previous landlords, but can give some indication of how old a pub is.

Yelp!

A business directory and review site, which was formed in 2004. I've only just become aware of it, though the owners claim to have over 184 million reviews as of June 2019.  Contains useful information, but the reviews are random and few in number. I looked at The Dancing Man, as it's the highest rated on the site, and it has had 10 reviews since the first in 2015. The most recent is Nov 2018. Compare that with Trip Advisor, which has 753 reviews since 2015, with the most recent today.

Boak & Bailey 

Blog review of a fairly random (and poorly chosen) selection of pubs mostly in the town centre, done in January 2019. It's a modest post by a reputable and popular beer blog.

Trip Advisor 

Probably the most popular and successful online review site. Unfortunately it doesn't specifically do pubs, so they will get listed under restaurants, and the focus will be on the food.  However, it's coverage is impressive, and no site gets as many reviews. Used in conjunction with WhatPub you can generally get a good idea if its the sort of pub you'll enjoy.

Pubstops of Southampton

Original 2015 map

Pubs closed, new or renamed as of July 2019

 

We moved to Southampton just over a year ago (2014), and my intention when we moved here was to visit every pub in Southampton. Well, I haven't done that yet. I started off well, and managed a fair few, but there's still a bit to do, so my intention for 2016 is to complete the job and visit those pubs I haven't yet been to, and also to revisit those pubs I have already visited so I can feel I have done all the pubs in Southampton in one year.

As an aid, the Pubstops of Southampton tube map, which was published in 2015, helps with its overview of the pubs in Southampton. Locations on the map are vague, and the routes are not really pub crawl routes, but it's a handy guide, and I'll be using that (modified a bit) as my route map.

There are some pub guides online, and I'll be looking at those as well, and seeing how useful they are.

Date: Jan 2016

Update: I have updated the map to July 2019 showing that 27 have closed completely, 19 have changed name (a new image and/or a new owner), and  22 completely new outlets have opened.

Date: July 2019

***

Pubs in Bitterne

Pubs in Woolston

• Pubs in Shirley

Pubs in Bedford Place

Pubs in Oxford Street