White Horse Inn (Nellie's), Beverley

Say what you like about Sam Smiths, and plenty of people do, they have some cracking good pubs. This one is up there with the best and well worth a visit. As Ray says, it can get busy on a Saturday afternoon, but everyone seemed to be behaving themselves and having a good time. The Old Brewery Bitter on hand pump was much too cold, and I had to wait a while for the distinctive flavour to develop. My partner read a description of the pub elsewhere afterwards, and we had to come back another evening when it was less busy so that we could appreciate the gas lighting, which she'd never seen before. Service was friendly and efficient both when it was quiet and when it was busy, and I'd make a point of calling in here on any future trip to Beverley. Date of visit: 30th July 2016

Well JB's review is very comprehensive in it's description of the pub and I don't have anything to add to it. The main room was quite lively on our Monday lunchtime visit and there were real fires going in two of the rooms. My pint of OBB was in decent nick, if rather cold. The pub is excellent, but the lack of a choice of ales is always going to hold my rating down. We'll be back though, probably just for one.

In the attractive, historic market town of Beverley in Yorkshire’s East Riding, is a pub that is described as “something of a Yorkshire institution” in Yorkshire’s Real Heritage Pubs book. It’s been on my “to do” list for absolutely yonks and I was therefore pleased to get the opportunity to make the short train journey here from Hull recently. Remarkably, the pub is still affectionately better known locally as “Nellies”, named after one Nellie Collinson, whose family acquired the pub in 1928 – it was previously owned by St Mary’s Church virtually across the road in Hengate - and ran it until the 1970’s, with Nellie, evidently a formidable larger than life character, at the helm. It’s a brick built building that dates back to at least the 17th century. It was in use as an inn in 1666 when, it is reported, an emissary of King Charles II used to hold office whilst on official business. The pub is a warren of adjoining dark gas lit rooms featuring uneven flagstoned and tiled floors, bric a brac, old furniture (dressing tables, sideboards etc), nicotine stained walls and old basic benches and settles. A former private kitchen features a large kitchen range. In winter, it’s lit by open fires. Nellie apparently stipulated in her will that the pub must not be substantially altered – hence the gas lights remain The rather understated entrance is through a walled car park, easily accessed from the nearby bus station. In front of us, we see what was the old coaching inn entrance and, on the left hand side, an original well, now filled in and covered by a locked metal grille to prevent worse for wear customers from an untimely demise. The main bar area consists of padded bench seats around the edge of the room and sturdy marble topped cast iron tables. This is clearly the favoured haunt of the locals and, based on my visit, a good number of them may well have been around in Nellie’s day. There’s several fireplaces each with an ornate mirror above. The back of this room faces onto Hengate – a busyish road at the back of the pub and, on a table here, we see an old cash register. Behind the bar a flagstoned corridor leads to a series of smaller rooms which really do look like they belong to a different era. Sitting in these rooms, apart from the traffic outside on Hengate, the only sound is the chiming of clocks, the occasional chinking of beer glasses and the murmur of conversation from the front bar. This is the much older and unaltered part of the pub. These rooms can also be accessed directly from a separate entrance on Hengate, where we see, acting as a pub sign, a much photographed fibreglass rocking horse above the doorway, which was a childhood toy of a former customer who lived opposite the pub. The pub is listed in CAMRA’s National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors. In one of the back rooms, a rather tatty and worn lever arch file contains various newspaper cuttings and articles collected over the years which, combined with framed information articles on the walls around the pub – “White Horse Inn, Facts not Fiction” – provide us with a fascinating history of the inn and the redoubtable Nellie in particular. For instance, we learn how Nellie ruled with a rod of iron – no women were allowed in the bar, they had to ring a bell and be served in one of the side rooms. Nurses were not allowed. There was no bar counter in those days – the beer came direct from barrels positioned on tables against the wall in the bar room. Make no mistake about it however, this pub is more than just a museum piece – even at 11.30 in the morning when I arrived, a lively bunch of regulars were engaged in animated discussion in the front bar about how to put the world to rights. A candle lit pub quiz takes place on Tuesday evenings. Sam Smiths acquired the pub in 1976 and, apart from the introduction of a bar servery in the main room and a large extension up a few steps at one side through the former private kitchen which houses several pool tables, the interior is untouched, particularly the back rooms that front onto Hengate, where a certain air of timelessness prevails. The Sam Smiths OBB is £ 1.80p and, whilst it’s no one’s favourite beer, there’s no better place to drink it than here. You really should try and get here sometime

Proper old school sam smith's pub. The pub is made up of a number of nooks and crannies and quirky rooms although it does have a modern extension at the rear. Usual sam smith's selection at cheap prices. Well worth seeking out.