The Chichester Inn, Chichester

This two bar Free house at the end of West Street originally dates from 1785. Today it functions as a good town centre (sorry, I still struggle to refer to Chichester as a City) pub with a focus on real ale and live music. The high ceilinged front lounge bar is spacious and comfortable with comfy chars around the edge and wooden chairs and tables in the middle. And a log fire gives a distinct smell of wood smoke in winter months. The larger back bar to the rear has additional seating, but doubles as the live music venue on weekends when bands play on the stage area at the back. And then beyond this is a very pleasant outside courtyard garden area which stretches away from the pub some distance, providing several individual seating areas including some heated covered areas with large comfortable settees. There are 5 Ale pumps on each of the bars and the landlord said that he usually has a minimum of three regional Sussex ales on at any time and increases this to five for the busy periods and at the weekend. We chose to visit at the first weekend of the month long Cheltenham festival when the pub was holding its own mini beer festival over the weekend to tie in with the main event. For this the left hand section of the front lounge bar was taken up with an additional ten beers available on silage, mainly from smaller regional brewers from around the country. These included brews from Salopian , Blue Monkey, Redemption and Castle Rock amongst others. A very enjoyable couple of visits were made to the Chi (as it is referred to by locals) , and I would classify this as a should visit pub when looking for a decent pint of Ale when in the City (sic) of Chichester.

I was last in here in 1993 so decided I ought o pay a visit and was pleasantly surprised. The bar off West Street is now laid out more for dining with the other at being more for drinkers. However the landlord who has been there since around 2004 has a good selection of small brewers ales on and the SIBA sign behind the bar supports this. On my visit he had one from Langhams Brewery, Flack Manor and Arundel with one Dom Bowmans that had just finished but a nice list of forthcoming ales hung on the wall. Shame that I hadn't revisited this pub sooner!