Look up as you walk through the Victorian Heart of Barrow and you’ll see a lot of ornamental moulded brickwork, like this over the entrance of the Derby Hotel in Dalton Road.
Lower down, the prospect is much less attractive. What must once have been a splendid Victorian alehouse has degenerated into a spartan chavvy boozer, revolving round wide-screen sport (and crude sport symbolism on the windows) and without even any decent beer in sight (no handpumps to bee seen anyway). Most unpleasant.
In fact, one shortcoming of Barrow is the lack of a halfway decent pub with good beer and an atmosphere congenial to conversation. A few are so-so, but most are ghastly and all but a handful don’t server proper beer. This is odd because there are lots of good pubs in the sparsely populated areas to the north.
Posted by enitharmon 
