Campaign for Real Pubs: The Red Lion

The Red Lion, Dayhills, Staffordshire ST15 8RU

A truly unspoilt country pub, part of a working farm, in the depths of rural Staffordshire east of Stone. The building itself has no sign indicating that it is a pub; there’s just an inn sign at the roadside and the small sign on an outbuilding shown on the picture. The car park is the area of hard standing, without any marked bays, in front of the pub.

The interior is basically just one room with a quarry-tiled floor, bench seating and old settles, dominated by a huge inglenook fireplace. The beer range centres on Midlands classic Draught Bass together with a couple of guest beers - Bombardier and Doom Bar on my visit in August 2016. No food is served. There aren’t many like this left, more’s the pity.

WHAT ARE REAL PUBS?

Real pubs are pubs whose primary function is still the original core purpose of pubs – for people to meet and socialise over a few drinks.

They may serve food, and very good food at that, but they don’t allow it to dominate to the exclusion of all else. They’ll probably have a strong core of regular customers, but still make casual drinkers welcome. They may well serve a good drop of real ale, but won’t be full of beer bores droning on about hop varieties and IBUs.

In many parts of the country they’re getting very hard to find. In recent years, the smoking ban, beer duty hikes, the demonisation of “one-drink driving” and the general anti-alcohol climate have all had their effect, but such pubs do still survive if you know where to look and deserve to be celebrated.

Although in many ways they are a laudable organisation, this blog is not connected with and does not in any way represent the Campaign for Real Ale.

The inclusion of a pub does not necessarily reflect a recent visit by myself, although often it does.

The Red Lion

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