Review

The Apsley House can be found down a side road off Clarence Parade on Portsmouth’s seafront. Glance down Auckland Road West and you’ll be greeted by its bright yellow façade and colourful hanging baskets. Attractive looking and colourful from the outside, bright and airy on the inside it is not. This is one of Portsmouth’s seafront pubs that remains traditional, there’s been little in the way of gentrification or modernisation gone on here, which can only be a good thing.

Traditional wooden barstools stand around the horseshoe shaped bar that dominates this small local pub. The wooden floor looks pleasingly worn and authentic. Were this a trendy modern bar, the exposed brickwork would be described as minimalist décor, fortunately this isn’t such an establishment, so you don’t have to pay extra for the fact that nobody can be bothered to plaster the walls.

To the left of the bar is an area containing a dart board, a pool table, one small TV and a big screen for showing the football. A golf game, a quiz machine and a jukebox, filled with modern and classic rock and indie albums, completes the traditional pub entertainment line up; the pool table is free on Monday and Thursday evenings. To the right of the bar is a raised area of seating slightly plusher than the rest of the pub (it has a carpet at least), where diners are encouraged to partake of the usual pub grub. There are picnic tables outside the front of the pub, where drinkers can take advantage of the pub’s south facing aspect on sunny days.

Of course, there is another Apsley House in England, as depicted beneath the sign on the front of the pub, it’s the Apsley House that stands at Hyde Park Corner in London and is the official residence of the Duke of Wellington. Unlike the rather sparsely decorated interior of this pub, it’s full of the most exotic and decorative of items; all given to the first Duke of Wellington, Sir Arthur Wellesley, by various grateful Nation States for the period of time Wellington spend marching around the Iberian Peninsular kicking the shit out of the French Army, and finally defeating the Emperor Napoleon himself and his Grande Armee (ha!) at the Battle of Waterloo. Strange that this pub doesn’t make more reference to England’s greatest ever General.

Review by AJS