Bletchley – Captain Ridley’s Shooting Party (JD Wetherspoon)
With an hour to kill in Bletchley, I thought I’d visit this JD Wetherspoon pub located on Queensway for the first time. I’ll use the history of the pub from their web-site to explain the name:
“Bletchley is best known as the World War II headquarters of Britain’s famous codebreakers – Bletchley Park. Sir Herbert Leon, a wealthy stockbroker, had bought the estate in 1882 and was key in its development. In 1937, the estate passed into government hands. Then, an undercover MI6 group arrived using the name ‘Captain Ridley’s Shooting Party’, with ‘an air of friends enjoying a weekend at a country house’. Their real purpose was to see whether Bletchley Park would work as a wartime location.”
The first building here was Halfway House which was constructed in 1870 when the area was effectively all fields. This became the New Inn later in the Victorian period and the pub was entirely rebuilt in the 1930s and that style is distinctive. During the 1980s, the pub was run by the wrestler Johnny Kincaid for a few years, back when it was named the Bletchley Arms. JD Wetherspoon took over the pub and renamed it in 2017, spent £2.4 million on the building and the refurbishment, but the heritage of the 1930s building remains.
The history sign outside of the pub which explains the heritage of the building.
The pub has this on display, noting it’s an Enigma Machine, although I don’t know of any more heritage than that.
The interior is clean and comfortable, with numerous power points dotted around which proved handy.
This JD Wetherspoon is on a lower price band so the 660ml of beer and steak & kidney pudding was just over £6, which is certainly good value. I set the bar quite low on this stuff, but the cutlery was dirty so required me to clean it before use. The drink is the ever reliable Elvis Juice from Brewdog, although the glass served was too dirty to use. The gravy isn’t defective incidentally, that’s just my obsession with black pepper everywhere.
The dessert of chocolate cookie crunch was under £2 and the half pint of White Dwarf from Oakham Ales was £1. The beer was OK, it was well kept and it had a citrus kick from the hops with pleasant end notes.
It’s a relatively very well reviewed JD Wetherspoon venue, one of the highest Google Review scores I’ve seen so things must normally be rather happy and content here. I thought I’d have a little read through though….
“Absolutely disgusting, sat at our table looking at food under a light on the counter, that we’d ordered for over 25 minutes before it was served to us. I complained that it had sat there way too long before being served to us & was asked to leave”
I wonder how strongly they complained to actually be asked to leave….
“Awful customer service, unfriendly atmosphere, untrained staff. We were delivered drinks to our table which we did not order and left untouched, then half an hour later a very unpleasant manager accused us of theft if we did not pay for the drinks. Your operations are completely inadequate and your approach to customers is aggressive and unjustified. Avoid if you don’t want to be scammed by rude servers and an even more ill-mannered and unreasonable manager”
If a team member served me drinks at a table and I just tacitly accepted them without saying anything I’d be expected to be asked to leave when they realised….
“No stirrers for tea/coffee (wood stick things) very very disappointed.”
Customers are sometimes very brave to deal with such inconveniences…
“Geeky looking guy”
I didn’t bother copying the rest of the review, but this one is easy to identify who is at fault and it’s not the team member…
“Me and me mate where going to go in there got id now we are both are in are 50s don’t go out much were not impressed as we don’t carry id on us so they didn’t let us in apparently door staff said they have to do this now since when”
There’s a heap of reviews like this stating that they are IDing absolutely everyone. This feels rather sub-optimal for the pub to do this at the door, although secretly I’m always pleased to be asked about my ID since I never am any more :/ But, looking at this news article, I can understand the issue.
“We will never go back again we were only allowed 3 drinks each”
Hmmmm, I think I can guess what’s happened here.
“Asked for a pint of cider from who I believe was the shift manager, she gave me a large head on it and was very rude when I mentioned that I had asked for”minus the head please” and commented that it was the best she could do”
How on earth have they served a customer a cider with head? I’m with the customer….
“Questioned about a cider with a meal for my boy, maybe I’m mistaken but looking at government legislation says: However, if you’re 16 or 17 and accompanied by an adult, you can drink (but not buy) beer, wine or cider with a meal???”
Definitely mistaken, it’s up to the pub and isn’t some sort of human right. If there were human rights about beers, they should be about not serving Madri.
Anyway, I’ve digressed again. I rather liked the pub, although the glass and cutlery could have been cleaner, the service was friendly, there was value for money and the real ale was well kept. I like the effort made with the heritage of the pub and changing the name to honour those who worked at nearby Bletchley Park.
