Town House, St Annes

Burlingtons Bar is quite simply one of the greatest pub rooms in Britain - a late Victorian below-ground bar covered from head to foot with tiles and having a magnificent ceramic bar counter. When the St Anne’s Hotel was demolished in 1985 and replaced by the Crescent Pub - now the Town House - the original basement bar, once known as Burlington Bertie’s, was preserved and it became a nightclub by the name of Tiles.

The bar, which is easily visible through the windows, is an excellent example of complete fitting out by Craven Dunnill, dating no doubt from the late 1890s, and includes a good geometric tiled floor, moulded wall tiling (some plain, some flowers and patterns) and an exceedingly long ceramic barfront in one of the firm’s two standard designs. It is identical to the bar front at the Red Lion, Erdington, Birmingham; and the Crown, Belfast, Northern Ireland and in colour is mostly yellow, brown, green and pink, with some floral motifs. It has a fairly restrained bar-back: the lion heads conceal apertures that once held pipes for dispensing spirits.

Please note the bar is not currently open to the public (but may be in the future) and to visit it you will need to ring the manager of the (modern) pub in advance to arrange a visit at quiet time.

Other Heritage Pubs with a ceramic bar counter are the Black Horse, Preston, Lancashire; Burlingtons Bar (at the Town House), St Annes on Sea, Lancashire; Mountain Daisy, Sunderland, Tyne & Wear; Polar Bear, Hull, East Yorkshire; White Hart Hotel, Hull, East Yorkshire; Garden Gate, Hunslet, Leeds, West Yorkshire; and Golden Cross, Cardiff, Glamorgan, Wales.

Other examples can be found at Horse & Jockey, Wednesbury, West Midlands where a small part on the left has been lost; Castle, Manchester City Centre; Waterloo Hotel & Bistro, Newport, Gwent, Wales which has no public bar facility; and there is one in China Red which was the Coach & Horses, Dunswell, East Yorks and now operates as a Chinese Restaurant.