Dan's Internet Plaice

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History

The pub evaluation scheme in its present format was born on a rather abbreviated Circle Line pub crawl on 15th December 2001, involving Messrs. David Wacey, Graham Buckley and Ed Lewis, although its origins may be traced back to earlier discussions with Messrs. Richard Bradshaw, Mark Giles, Matthew Oliver, Adam Sharr and Andrew Wright pertaining to establishments visited on a Croydon Tramlink pub crawl. After a few attempts to get the scoring and weighting system correct, the eventual scheme was hit upon which seems to work rather well.


Guidelines

In general, an average pub will score half marks on each category. Marks are generally divided as low as quarters out of a total of 25, so that it is possible to give a percentage score. This however seems too analytical, so the mark out of 25 is preferred.
Here are a few guidelines for marking each section:
  1. Toilets - an average toilet should get 1 out of 2. Things to look for include availability of toilet paper, working locks on cubicle doors, ease of access and egress from bar, soap in the soap dispensers, whether there is a trough [good, especially with partitions] or individual urinals [bad], hand-dryers, towel roll and general cleanliness. If there is piss on the floor and fag butts in the urinal/trough, it loses marks. Nice stone worktops get extra marks.
  2. Bar snacks - marked out of 2. Simply peanuts and crisps won't do. This would get a pub about ¾ out of 2. The presence of things like Sahara hot nuts, scampi fries, real pork scratchings, pickled eggs, vacuum packed cockles, sweet machines, cheese moments, twiglets and chocolate bars will get it bonus points. Some pubs, like the Brewery Tap in Wimbledon, put up a bar snacks menu on a chalk board and have things like Bombay mix and olives. Others will have visits from a seafood man. Obviously good scores there. Bar meals do not count, although may be considered in the last section of category 4.
  3. Beer - a big category here for a total of 11 marks, subdivided into three sections
  4. Atmosphere - 10 marks available for this category, split into two sections.
Thus an average pub gets 12½ out of 25 [50%]. The system has been noted to work well for most pubs, the only ones getting flattering marks are Wetherspoons, although this is noted in the remarks column.

Pub ratings and tally thus far

Pub Scoring Sheets may be downloaded here. And this excel spreadsheet will allow you to do them electronically and return them to me!

The pub rankings are available for boys on these sheets, in both xls and html format.
Bloke_pub_results.xls [the first 300] Bloke 1 HTML
Bloke_pub_results2.xls [301 to 580] Bloke 2 HTML
Bloke_pub_results3.xls [581 to 983] Bloke 3 HTML
Bloke_pub_results4.xls [984 to 1325] Bloke 4 HTML
Bloke_pub_results5.xls [1326 to 1470] Bloke 5 HTML
Bloke_pub_results5a.xls [1471 to 1661] Bloke 5a HTML
Bloke_pub_results6.xls [1662 to 1955] Bloke 6 HTML
Bloke_pub_results7.xls [1956 to 2108] Bloke 7 HTML
Bloke_pub_results8.xls [2109 to 2182] Bloke 8 HTML
Bloke_pub_results9.xls [2183 to 2319] Bloke 9 HTML
Bloke_pub_results10.xls [2320 to 2396] Bloke 10 HTML
Bloke_pub_results11.xls [2397 to 2559] Bloke 11 HTML
Bloke_pub_results12.xls [2560 to 2726] Bloke 12 HTML
Bloke_pub_results13.xls [2727 to 2905] Bloke 13 HTML
Bloke_pub_results14.xls [2906 to 3064] Bloke 14 HTML
Bloke_pub_results15.xls [3065 to 3169] Bloke 15 HTML
Bloke_pub_results16.xls [3170 to 3214] Bloke 16 HTML
Bloke_pub_results17.xls [3215 to 3268] Bloke 17 HTML
Bloke_pub_results18.xls [3269 to 3312] Bloke 18 HTML
Bloke_pub_results19.xls [3313 to 3340] Bloke 19 HTML
Bloke_pub_results20.xls [3341 to 3344] Bloke 20 HTML
There is also a sheet for girls: Bint_pub_results.xls Bint HTML

This section is continuously being updated, so check it regularly to see if your local has been rated.

Italics are used on the boys' spreadsheet in cases where I wasn't in the pub at the time of marking. A large number of pubs have been rated more than once. The list of unique pubs rated can be found here (spreadsheet) or as html.

I have also put together an all time ranking (duplicates and other peoples' results taken out) of pubs. The data goes up to the end of 2004, but will be refreshed periodically. Download it in excel or html

There are summaries of Pub Check lists from various years, also available as HTML:
 
1999 HTML 169 pubs 
2000 HTML 251 pubs 
2001 HTML 189 pubs 
2002 HTML 323 pubs 
2003 HTML 508 pubs 
2004 HTML 381 pubs 
2005 HTML 418 pubs 
2006 HTML 423 pubs 
2007 HTML 224 pubs 
2008 HTML 111 pubs 
2009 HTML 175 pubs
2010 HTML 115 pubs
2011 HTML 210 pubs
2012 HTML 231 pubs
2013 HTML 240 pubs
2014 HTML 243 pubs
2015 HTML 159 pubs
2016 HTML 75 pubs
2017 HTML 74 pubs
2018 HTML 64 pubs
2019 HTML 56 pubs
2020 HTML 6 pubs

Note: these HTML files might not be as regularly updated as the word/excel ones.


Other statistics

You can also access Chris Walker's Oxford Pub Guide here. It was copied from him in the late 1990s and has not been maintained, instead providing a wonderful glimpse into history.


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Dan Lovegrove
dan@doctor-lovegrove.com

Last updated 25th July 2021.