Pub exteriors

Lord Napier, Rock Ferry, Birkenhead

This is not an old photograph. In fact it was taken on the same day as I wrote this blog. It might not seem anything out of the ordinary but the pub exterior caught my attention.

Up to say 10 years ago most pub fronts advertised a beer or brewery. Here in Wirral it was typically Whitbread, Tetley, Bass, Higson’s and latterly Boddington’s. If you look closely there were still relics of long-closed breweries such as Yates, Bent’s and Birkenhead. The growth of pubcos that didn’t own breweries meant that pubs nowadays have lost the  branding of yore. Not a bad thing for those of us who remember Tetley’s dreadful brown and yellow corporate colours and identikit signs. I tried to find a photo of it on the internet but they must have all been removed by the good taste police.

What is unusual about this photograph is that the Boddington’s style of lettering has been  renewed and refurbished in the last few weeks. That may give the impression that Boddington’s still has a meaningful existence. The Napier does actually still sell the beer albeit as Creamflow. I was thinking that it may be brewed in Penzance or Dover or maybe even Inverness, somewhere as far away as it is possible to get from Manchester. However, I'm informed that it is still produced in Manchester by Hyde's. True as that may be, the reality for most of us is that Boddington's ceased to exist some years ago.