Norwich – Compleat Angler (Two Julians)

The fifth pub on our perambulation is the Greene King operated Compleat Angler, located near to Norwich’s main (well, only) railway station.

The building has a complex history, it was built in around the 1840s and was opened as the Norfolk Railway House, but had other names such as the Toll House. It was renamed to be the Compleat Angler in 1974, although it had a brief spell as the Windsors between 1984 and 1988. The pub was originally a Bullards pub and they advertised in the local press in 1853 for someone to take over the lease of the pub. Later on, the venue was taken over by Anglia Taverns before becoming part of Chef & Brewer (George Plunkett took a photo of the building in 1988 when it was a Chef & Brewer pub). Then the years of pubco rapid expansion came and it was taken over by Scottish & Newcastle, then the Spirit Group, then Punch Taverns and then Greene King saw an opportunity to punish the locals and they took over in around 2018.

The landlord in the 1870s was a man called Robert Rix and he also owned property, something that is known as he was summoned to court for failure to manage a well on his property in Canterbury Place in St. Benedict’s, but he “undertook to remedy the evil” which is handy…. Incidentally, I don’t specifically know why the pub name was chosen, but it relates to a book written by Izaak Walton in 1653. In the post-war period, a portion of the pub was known as the ‘Blue Room’ when it appeared to be more of a club arrangement.

Here it is in the mid-1880s, although very much surrounded by the distillery and vinegar works. Around two years after this map was published, they replaced the 1844 lattice iron arch bridge which had been built to access the railway station with a new and more substantial structure. This new bridge, which is still there today, is 16 metres long and 15 metres wide and it was constructed in the station yard of Norwich Railway Station and then they rolled it onto the foundations of the older bridge. I’ve been told that the downstairs pub cellar has some evidence of an older structure which faced the road, but I’ve never been down there to have a look.

The entire bar is clean and tidy, although it’s perhaps a little formulaic and lacking in any authentic heritage. This isn’t helped by the numerous massive refurbishments that take place here every few years, although they’ve never really brought the downstairs into full usage and it was closed when we visited. For several years this pub was used as the pub for away football fans, but it reverted to being a pub that home fans could use instead from around 2019.

The food menu and there are a range of traditional pub meals available. In all fairness to the venue, the food reviews seem generally quite positive, so they’re clearly doing something right. However, a customer recently posted a photo of a saucer sized plate of chips:

“Should be ashamed of themselves. Ordered “House seasoned” fries which cost £3.50. Received at most 10 normal fries with a dusting of salt. If you’re going to charge £3.50 for frozen fries at least give a decent amount.”

I’m with the customer here having seen the photo, but the pub stood firm in their response:

“Hello sorry that you weren’t happy with your visit today we unfortunately have a spec that we have to follow with weights of our products will raise this with our head office.”

The team members here all seemed friendly and helpful, although it’s hard to engage about beer as they don’t really have anything to engage about. I suppose they could chat away about the nearby JD Wetherspoon outlet which sells Greene King IPA and Greene King Abbot, but also has seven guest beers. Anyway, I mustn’t sneer, beer is for the many and not the few. Although I’d personally prefer the many had more choices, I won’t go on and on about it….

OK, I might go on about it for a bit longer. Here is the beer choice and I can’t help feeling that the reason Greene King doesn’t offer a guest beer here is because no-one would drink any of the stuff that they brew themselves. Mind you, I’ve always been a bit cynical and Julian does nothing to discourage that. There’s nothing here of any great interest (to me anyway), it’s poorly curated in terms of different beer styles and the prices were towards the higher end of the scale. Other than for a few generic national brands, their ‘craft beer’ selection is stuff they brew themselves and is frankly about as desirable as Christmas in the middle of March. I remember when they did offer guest beers here, but this appears to be a thing of a past judging from the Untappd check-ins over recent months.

I decided that the beer that might be the one I would dislike the least would be the Spring Break from Greene King. It’s arguably a pointless beer (by arguably, I mean I’ll argue that), but I’ll give them that it’s a well-kept pointless beer although it was devoid really of any flavour or depth of taste. It saddens me that some great small brewers are struggling whilst Greene King occupies a beautiful building and sells this.

There are a couple of negative reviews that the venue doesn’t have a disabled toilet and their defence is that as they’re a listed building they’re not allowed to make the changes. I’m puzzled about this, they’re not a traditionally listed building so they don’t have a Grade I or Grade II listing, but they do indeed have a local city listing. Given that their toilets are at one end of the building which is level and would enable disabled access, is it really the case that the council has refused a planning permission change to make some changes to these toilets? Historic England is generally very favourable to greater disability access in fully listed buildings, so this seems like a situation that the Compleat Anger are being treated a little unfairly if the council are indeed blocking disabled toilets.

I can’t help thinking what a wonderful pub this could be if Greene King sold it to another operator, although that might be being unkind. Having noted that, Jay Rayner has inspired me to have some semblance of honesty, so there we go. In terms of the positives, it has a prime site, it’s large in size and there are rather lovely river views from their terrace area, but I can’t forget their lack of guest ales and that all of the five beers they have on cask are rated towards the lower end of the scale on Untappd. Anyway, the team members were friendly, the pub was clean, the beer was well-kept and the surroundings were comfortable, but it’s not really a pub that is aimed at me as I like beer. I don’t think that Julian will mind me saying that it’s not really a pub that will be high on his repeat list, but I think in his eyes every pub is aimed at him if I’m being honest.