‘Crammed' (verb) - Full to Overflowing...

From the title you’ll no doubt be expecting a story of a pub at the peak of it’s popularity, full of adoring customers enjoying a range of top quality real ales...

Customer lines them up...

...well no - that’s not quite it....

This is a story of  a 'Herne Disciple’ the owner of a micro-pub, who is overflowing with determined optimism, despite the difficulties he has experienced, to own a successful micro pub.

It’s easy to forget when new micropubs are opening every week (if not every day) that there are also a proportion that are closing after relatively short existences.

Matt Lucker previously owned the Tram Stop Bar & Kitchen micro-pub in Portswood which closed in 2018.  I’d been in there once during a local CAMRA micro-pub tour, and it was a generously sized micro on a corner plot in Portswood's main shopping street.  It comprised a bar area and a lounge area with sofa seating etc where light lunch type meals were served.  The bar had a good range of real ales.  A really nice place and it’s a shame it didn’t make it.  According to Matt the costs - particularly the lease were just too high.

The Tram Stop micro pub from a January 2017 visit.

Despite the failure of his previous venture, Matt is back with the latest micro on the block, the Crammed Inn, 48 High Street Southampton, in a former Oceans gift shop and left luggage premises (an interesting combination?) according to the Daily Echo article covering the opening of his new venture.

Image - Google maps street view.

This is indeed a quite small micro - long and thin stretching back from the frontage, with the bar on the left hand side - seating mainly on the right, and the toilet and storage at the rear.  It seems to be quite well placed for customers though, near the centre of Southampton and the quay area, and also in a area which has been redeveloped to provide a significant number of blocks of upmarket flats.

Matt on the right behind the bar and chatting to David 

When I called in with my friend David just after the 4pm opening on Thursday afternoon it was quiet as you might expect, and in addition the micro has only been open for 3 months so Matt is still working to build up his customer base.

At the bar there were a couple of Urban Island cask ales, Urban Pale and Porter 28.

Pristine urban porter...

I’m a sucker for a good dark beer so went for the Porter.  It was a good choice, a 5% abv Porter with gentle hints of smokiness and chocolate according to Urban island. It was on top form (very good).

After a while another late afternoon customer arrived in the middle of a conversation with a mate on his mobile (which was on speaker) about fish and chips.  Though initially engrossed in his conversation the guy soon realised we were all enjoying the fish and chip discussion and, laughing with embarrassment, he ended the call,  ordered a pint of Upham Brewery’s UB5 keg ale, and sat down near the window.

Body art...

We received an enthusiastic welcome from Matt who chatted to us about his micro pub experiences, beers and his plans for the future.  The Crammed Inn is a pleasant micro-pub and Matt certainly deserves to succeed, especially after the hard knock he received with the closing of his previous micro-pub.

Perhaps his abundance of optimism also shines though in the name he has chosen for this pub.  It is certainly crammed with optimism, and there is no reason at all why it shouldn’t be crammed with customers...

The Cricketers Arms

The Cricketers Arms sits in the quiet backwater which is Carlton Place in Southampton and rubs shoulders with adjoining regency style properties.  The adjacent Carlton Crescent conservation area is known for its fine rows of Regency houses - once the private residences of businessmen, army and navy officers, but converted to offices for solicitors and the like during the 20th century, and now all Grade II listed.

The Cricketers Arms next to posh regency neighbours.

Records indicate that The Cricketers Arms was around as a public house/beer house as far back as 1861.  I couldn’t find out if has always had the same name - but I couldn’t spot any others on a brief search of the internet.  Perhaps the name comes from the fact that it was not far away from the Hampshire County Cricket ground which was in nearby Northlands Road from 1885 until the new Rose Bowl ground took over in 2001 (the Rose Bowl is now the Ageas Bowl thanks to the wonders of modern sponsorship).

The sound of leather on willow, appeals for lbw or the cheers from the crowd as Phil Mead (County Cricket's most prolific run scorer) knocked another century, could probably be heard at the pub.

However there isn't any internal indications of a cricket theme, but there is a famous Southampton FC  photograph of Peter Rodriguez, Mick Shannon et al with their 1976 FA cup (Life After Football will fill in the other names).

Past cup glory...

The pub is a free house and retains the atmosphere of a nice old fashioned town pub, floor boards, lots of wood trim and cream walls.  It also has a beautiful dark wood U-shaped bar with the single room wrapping around it.

It was quiet as you would expect mid-Thursday afternoon with just a handful of customers here and there.  They were joined by a couple of business suits after a while - probably local solicitors finishing early for the day.

Traditional pub atmosphere...

There were 5 hand pumps serving cask ale with a wide choice of breweries...

Your five a day...

As a test for the lady behind the bar we asked where the Animal Armadillo beer came from*.  She wasn’t sure - but possibly somewhere west of Southampton.  Not inspired by such vagueness we opted for the Red Cat Brewing Co.  Art of T, which we know comes from Winchester.  It was very good too, a fine concoction of malt, Earl Grey tea and Tettnang hops - possibly something for teetotallers to consider.

A paw print and fine lacings - the Art of T from Red Cat Brewing

The lady behind the bar (just visible above the pint in the above photo), who I think might have been co-bar manager Kat, chatted to us and explained that the pub is a favourite haunt of performers from the nearby Mayflower Theatre, and they often turn up for a drink after their evening performance.  Kat was particularly excited to find one day that the cast of Wicked, had turned up.  She explained she could hardly contain herself as this is her favourite show, but was thrilled when the cast invited her to watch a performance from the orchestra pit.  She said this was great fun - though it sounded like a recipe for neck ache to me...

Unfortunately despite her obvious enthusiasm for the theatre and pub going performers, she also failed our second test when she couldn’t tell us anything about the photo on the pub wall (below)...

Cast call in for a well earned pint after a successful production of 'War Horse' at The Mayflower Theatre (possibly)...

So - a great little pub and one for the itinerary on the Beer and Pubs Forum's much anticipated, but yet to be arranged, Proper Day Out in Southampton.

...and while we wait for Life After Football to provide the names of the full FA Cup winning Southampton FC team, here’s another fantastic photo showing the teams tour of Southampton on their open top double decker bus (probably sponsored by Dentyne chewing gum)...

Famous scene yet to be replicated in Southampton...

*Animal cask beers are of course brewed by XT Brewing Co. of Buckinghamshire, which is not 'west of Southampton'...

...Animal beers are special beers brewed by little creatures, according to XT’s website, so a brewery tour should be interesting...

‘Late at night the little creatures sneak into the brewery and make special beers...they make them once and get bored...then move onto a new idea...'

The Guide Dog

Finally I made it to the pub with more CAMRA Pub of the Year awards than you can shake a stick at...and achieved another tick in my 2018 Good Beer Guide...

Yes of course I’ve worked out that if I buy a Good Beer Guide very year, the pubs in it change, and that would mean that you would have to race round the UK every year to keep up with ticking all the new pubs in the Guide.

What would be the point of that....when I can take my time ticking the ones in the 2018 copy....(if I’m not too busy visiting Hampshire dining pubs)?

Anyway - I digress....

It was a nice walk from Weatherspoons Standing Order to the Guide Dog, fortified with curry, Peerless Oatmeal Stout and Wychwood Dirty Tackle...

...past the rather grand Star Hotel...

...which according to the stone plaque, once did a competitive stage coach service to London...

...latterly superseded by National Express coaches which probably don’t stop at Alton and Alresford on their way up the M3.  Of course what the history books don’t tell you that the stage coach didn’t run on Sundays because of engineering works - nothing changes...

It was a sunny afternoon and instead of the commercial hubbub of the High Street we opted to walk through the relative tranquility of the series of city centre parks running parallel to it...

I would have taken a photo, but after I was handed a leaflet by a nice couple of Jehovahs Witness ladies, I was preoccupied with thoughts of whether they had specifically singled me out for a leaflet, because they thought I needed saving...

Soon we came to the Bevois Valley area,  who’s community have invented a new craze of identifying the historic past of all of their local buildings....and adding plaques or murals to commemorate them...

In this unassuming, but historic, suburb of Southampton, hidden away on an equally unassuming backstreet, is The Guide Dog pub...

This cosy little two room pub is extremely modest, and except for it’s proud sign (top photo) and range of ales on the bar, would give no clue to it’s impressive list of awards.  Though perhaps the set of GBG’s is another hint...

It was especially quiet on this Thursday afternoon, with just a handful of customers...

Handful of customers...

...ah, there they are....

As we studied the range of cask ales on offer...

..the very helpful landlord explained that the SteamTown ‘Little Box’ (4%)  had in fact been called 'FireBox’ (4.7%) the previous week.  However said Firebox was, according to the landlord a little too strong for his customers as a session ale, so Steam Town Brew Co. had produced the ‘Little Box’ version for them.  How about that for responding to your customer feedback...!

It was a good story and persuaded us to try a pint of the Little Box which was very good and didn’t seem to be impaired by it’s lost 0.7% ABV at all.

We sat and enjoyed the beer...

Like lacings - the branding on the Steam Town glasses magically appears as you drink the beer...

...and soaked up the peace and quiet, occasionally broken by a conversation between the landlord and one of the customers.  Apparently - so one conversation revealed, the Guide Dog is in the match day catchment area for Southampton FC’s nearby St Marys Stadium, and so gets crammed with fans for a pre-match pint as they continue to hope for an elusive 3 points.

It also frequented by some disillusioned fans on the way home from the match.  On a recent match day there had been a fairly drunken fan intent on fighting anyone, and though the landlord offered him the opportunity to leave with dignity, he couldn’t manage it and needed the assistance of the local constabulary and their law enforcement measures to remove himself from the premises.

Despite this uncommon occurrence, the pub clearly has allegiance to its nearby premiership neighbour...

Bobby fires home the winner...

...the caption for the painting of this historic event reads...

All Saints Day...

...of course Life After Football will be able to name all the players in the painting.

The Guide Dog is without doubt a great pub, in a quiet, unassuming, rather than flashy way.  A pub in which you could happily while away the hours, with a few quality beers...

Informative toilet displays about discipline, post office queuing, and other things...

..and a chuckle or two in the toilets....


Pub Mirror Moment...