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Colston Crawford's
Beer Column
For 21 years I wrote a beer and pubs column for the Derby Telegraph. After retiring in October 2025, I am continuing it as a blog, and this is it. Feel free to read, subscribe, comment or whatever.
Posts
How does Shardlow manage to support seven pubs when bigger villages have none? A few thoughts...
The Malt Shovel at twilight, by the canal at Shardlow. It’s long been a fascination of mine that the village of Shardlow supports no less than seven pubs in these most difficult times for the hospitality industry. It’s a freakishly large number for a village with, give or take, 1,000 voters (I know this, since I used to help out as a poll clerk during elections as a sideline). Compare that to Findern, which has no pubs for almost 5,000 inhabitants, or Borrowash, which has one
Colston Crawford
May 194 min read
How does Shardlow manage to support seven pubs when bigger villages have none? A few thoughts...
The Malt Shovel at twilight, by the canal at Shardlow. It’s long been a fascination of mine that the village of Shardlow supports no less than seven pubs in these most difficult times for the hospitality industry. It’s a freakishly large number for a village with, give or take, 1,000 voters (I know this, since I used to help out as a poll clerk during elections as a sideline). Compare that to Findern, which has no pubs for almost 5,000 inhabitants, or Borrowash, which has one
Colston Crawford
May 19
A beer in Beer? Don't mind if I do... a box ticked on my travels
The bar at the Dolphin, the highlight of the pubs in Beer, owned by the historic Hall & Woodhouse brewery. A bit of a travelogue for my latest piece, as I fulfilled a long-held whimsical idea to have a beer in Beer. Beer is an absolutely delightful village on the south Devon coast, a seaside village without amusement arcades but with beach huts, deckchairs for hire, clifftop walks and the opportunity to buy the day’s catch from the fishing boats hauled up on the beach – a lis
Colston Crawford
May 11
A homage to The Chequers at Ticknall, a classic country village pub
Tony Matthews has been the licensee at the Chequers for eight years after arriving almost by accident from Mablethorpe. The ancient, classic handpumps at the Chequers Inn, Ticknall, creak as if in protest or pain as they serve pints of Bass. They are the sort of black, stumpy pumps us older drinkers used to see a lot of. They have all but disappeared by now. However, things have a habit of not changing in the Chequers, which is a large part of its enduring appeal, and those p
Colston Crawford
Apr 30
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