The Heather Brow, Claughton, Birkenhead

Jan 26 2008 by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post

LADY Penelope of Pensby has become something of a little sniffer dog for the Pub Column, snuffling out undiscovered alehouse nuggets.

She came up trumps again with the Heather Brow, a traditional old boozer tucked away in the Claughton district of Birkenhead.

The Pub Column likes Birkenhead – though it’s not to everyone’s taste.

Paddy Shennan who writes about pubs in the Daily Post’s sister paper, the Echo, followed our lead and visited The Swinging Arm, near Hamilton Square, last week. Paddy, like Yours Truly, thinks the one-eyed city has a unique beauty all of its own with – New York excepted – the best riverside view in the world.

However, the colleague he dragged along kicking and screaming with him snorted afterwards that the Birkenhead experience “was like going to Mars”.

He meant it in a wholly negative fashion. But, alternatively, if you consider going to Mars in the context of an adventure to find something that’s strange but pleasantly familiar then the Heather Brow fits the bill.

The Brow is sadly part of a dying breed in an era of chrome and laminate bar conversions, a compact three-roomed locals’ local.

It’s a proud stalwart which follows what the Pub Column has previously called the rites of passage principle.

It starts with the Dad bringing his Lad for his first pint.

The Lad then becomes a Dad and then brings his own Lad along.

And so the cycle continues while the pub remains a haven of stability and familiarity in a modern world of constant transformation.

Paul Finlay, who has managed the pub on behalf of Tony Houlihan for more than 20 years, confirmed this in his own fashion.

“You start off in the Red Room in the back, then you move on to your place at the bar and then finally you end up in the Blue Room which we call God’s Waiting Room,” laughs Paul.

The Lady and Yours Truly had tempted fate by parking ourselves in the latter, a long narrow room with benches bound in green leather down either side of the lamp-lit walls. It’s a convivial place which invites conversation and makes it impossible to be a Billy No Mates.

While we sat and supped what must be the most perfect – and cheapest at £1.82 – pint of Cains ever glugged, in the intimate bar to the right the regular tea-time crowd were propped up on their stools watching Deal Or no Deal where Noel Edmonds, as ever, was playing the banker.

“You can set the clock by the people who come in and take up their same specks at the same time every day,” said amiable barmaid Sandra Traynor, who said that although it was very much a man’s pub, women like herself – and indeed Lady Penelope – still felt entirely comfortable.

The sport connection may have a lot to do with the “bloke thing”.

The bar is dominated by a gilded scroll of honour and trophy cabinet stuffed with silver swag won by the Village Golf Society which plays at West Hoyle Golf Club. One of them is 53-year-old Paul’s trophy for becoming last year’s West Wirral Golf Champion.

The cavernous Red Room, duly dotted with ruddy leather seating, is the after-match meeting place for the pub’s two football teams, Mallaby FC, who play Saturday, and Sunday league Brow FC. At weekends it guarantees a full house of people, happy with a familiar home.

“There was talk of knocking the three rooms into one but that would be the end – we like it the way things are,” said Paul defiantly.

And so say all of us.