please note - reviews on this site are purely the opinion of site visitors, so don't take them too seriously.
Pub number 3 of the day and my first one that doesn’t appear in the 2015 GBG. Almost across the road from The Grove so it’s rude to not visit it.
It’s about 1.30pm when we get to this large Greene King pub, it’s empty inside but extremely busy in the outside seating area at the front with food proving very popular.
3 ales on the hand pumps and I opt for a pint of Head Brewers Club Trial Brew No 8 @ 5.0%. The barmaid asks me if I’ve ever had this beer before and I say no she then laughs and say’s it’s interesting! Not an ale for the summer this is really a Christmas ale with a very strong spiced taste and smell. Kept and poured well and therefore drinkable.
I didn’t venture back inside to check the décor but it’s a very decent looking pub and on this visit it’s one I would recommend.
Just to add that the food looked good.
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this is a lovely pub in a nice area , welcoming staff and the food and drink was good , my gammon chips and eggs was just how a decent pub meal should be , food a bit slow this time but staff apologised and made me feel welcome
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Up this way last Saturday to visit the Grove but as it was before 12 it was closed.
Moved on here to see a big sign outside saying "Open from 11am daily"
I entered and what a gem of a place. A notice tells you that this is the oldest pub in TW.
Now its only 11.30 and there are only two other punters in so service was spot on from a friendly barman.
There are 7 hand pumps split on two sides 4/3. A chalk board tells you the selction. The had Abbott and GK IPA, Hydes Original BB, Darkstar Hophead,
Old Dairy Gold Top and Everards Tiger, one tap was not being used.
I had a pint of Hydes (£3.15) followed by a pint of Gold Top (£3.20) both were very good and well kept.
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Always been a lovely little pub, a bit out of the way, but worth walking up that hill for!!
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It seems that the Sunday Quiz has disappeared.... Popped in just before Christmas after about a year away. It wasn't as frendly as before, the sercice was slow and the beer far too cold. Literally lacked warmth as the fires were wimpy - pile them high and get some character back into the place!
Could be a great pub but unfortunately it is far too complacent.....
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The Compasses never fails to delight. From the minute you walk through the front door. There are lots of nooks and crannies so you can always find a quiet corner. For summer it has plenty tables outside and in winter it has three coal fires roaring away.
The cask ales here are the best in Tunbridge Wells by a mile. It is an uphill walk to get here but it is always worth it.
Lunches attract both locals and office folk. In the evening it is mainly locals and the place has a lovely atmosphere.
The menu is great and the food always looks and tastes great. The new landlord and landlady have maintained, possibly enhanced, every aspect of the place in the short time that they have been there.
You cannot go to Tunbridge Wells without dropping in!!
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Popped in here for a beer and a quick bite after a dreadful meeting in the locality and thought it worthy of recommendation here. Very impressed with the staff and the condition of the ales, good proper food and a nice atmosphere to lift my flagging spirits.
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Very pleasant pub for a few beers or to start a night out. It's a Greene King establishment so has the standard ales and thankfully has 3-4 other guests which gives variety. Very good value, good atmosphere when busy and nice interior
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I last reviewed this pub in 2008 and boy have things turned around. In 2008 the pub was badly run, the staff rude and disinterested and the beer very poor. Since then there have been a succession of mediocre managers and little has changed......UNTIL NOW. The current managers are friendly and courteous, as are their staff. The place has been smartened up, the food is good and reasonably priced and best of all they know what they're doing with their beer, with a varied choice of ales all of a consistently high standard. The Compasses is once agan one of the best pubs in town and long may it last!
Davo1 - 25 Jan 2011 13:47 |
Recently refurbished to an excellent standard, The Compasses is definitely the best pub in Tunbridge Wells. It is under new management now and the new owners could not be more welcoming and friendly. The beer selection is great and the food has improved beyond belief; it is excellent and very reasonably priced. There is plenty of seating in the various areas of the pub as well as a well covered and heated smoking area outside. The Compasses also has a Bar Billiards table and a quiz machine to keep you entertained. There is sometimes live music of good quality which, thanks to the pub having different areas in which to sit, does not have to be overbearing. The quiz on Sunday evenings is particularly well run with generous prizes and individual food platters for all teams. All in all, The Compasses is a very friendly pub which offers an enjoyable place to drink and socialise. I cannot recommend it more highly. N.B- Don't judge the place by the picture on this website, it makes it look like a proper dive. As I have mentioned, it has been refurbished and is extremely smart now!
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Frustrated last summer when visiting the town for the cricket to find the pub was closed for a refurb.
Went a couple of months ago and found the place hadn't changed very much. A sprawling pub with lots of areas to drink in plus a real fire. A large though not very varied selection of beers, Abbot, Speckled Hen, Greene King, Morland Original, Pursuit of Hoppiness, Keltik Magic and another I can't recall the name of.
Not very busy but it was mid/late afternoon.
Haven't experienced any of the surliness referred to by previous contributors.
Hopefully it will still be open for this years cricket week!
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Very busy Friday lunchtime, just about got a seat and near the real fire too! Staff naturally busy but assurances of being served soon were appreciated. Old Speckled Hen was good, as was the mature cheese sandwich.
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Are they trying to kill the pub?
They close the pub on one the busiest weeks of the year, Cricket Week, for a refurb that did not a lot. On the Friday of the snow it closed at 9pm. On Christmas Eve it closed at 10pm because the staff were tired. All this will have done wonders for their annual turnover.
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My partner and I visited this pub about 2 weeks ago and I have to agree with the two most recent postings. I believe that the young woman in question is actually the Manageress! (as she was the only one out of all the staff with a sour face!) An incredibly rude person who oozed coldness on a major scale. Not being locals we were also eyed with distaste, she was also unpleasant to her staff which was a shame as they could have taught her a thing or two about customer service as they were all very friendly. We decided to stay for a second drink as the sour one had decided to go upstairs and our second drink was served by a pretty younger member of staff with a cheerful smile on her face and the atmospher changed from being frosty to pleasant.
We were told by some of the locals that the manageress has delusions of grandeur, which i can honestly say was clearly on display when we entered this establishment!
The Compasses is located in a beautiful area and the pub could have a good atmospherE (if the manageress stayed up stairs!).
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Having run many pubs myself over a period of 30 years I was eagerly awaiting my first visit to The Compasses. A pub that was recommended to me by an old business partner who has lived in Tunbridge Wells all her life. I walked through the door and was very impressed by the general atmosphere of 'The Oldest Pub In Tunbridge Wells'. There was a good selection of wine, beers and spirits on offer, and the food menu looked very appetising. I was standing at what I presume was the main bar with only a handful of customers to my left. I waited patiently to purchase my beverage having made eye contact with a member of staff, a further 5 minutes elapsed and still I waited. At last I was served by someone who I can only assume had gotten out of the wrong side of the bed and had the most sour faced look about her I have ever encountered, the old adage 'chewing a wasp' could never have been so apt. Imagine my shock and surprise when I discovered that she was in fact the landlord of this establishment. In my professional experience one golden rule is to always greet customers with a smile and always always be polite. My second beer was served by a younger member of staff and this was a much more pleasurable experience. In fairness to The Compasses the food looked delicious, although I did not purchase any myself. The overall atmosphere was also very congenial.
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just wlk down the hill, the grove tvern will let you chomp on your fish n chips there!!!!!
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I was interested in the comment made about the pubs attitude. I visited with a friend who lives very close by. We ordered drinks at Friday lunchtime in a break from business and then food. They told us no food for at least an hour. Then we asked if a sandwich would take as long and they said yes a large number had arrived and they had a backlog. Well I had a look around and there was a bunch of about 8 outside and a few inside. So as they had allowed us to buy the drinks before telling us they could not serve us food in a reasonable time we sat outside. We then bought some fish and chips from same shop so we could at least have something. Behold a really nasty young woman approached us and announced fish and chip eaters were breaking their "rules" and we had to leave. Astounded we were then told we could " go and eat in the adjacent park and they would put our drinks in a container.....or the final offer a refund and please leave our pub".
Now its funny that we are in our forties, relatively affluent, and well dressed. The girl would not listen to our comment that werent congenital fish and chip merchants camping out on pub forecourts, but bona fide diners who had been shortchanged by their imposed one hour delay. She acted like a bossy traffic warden, which would have been funny if it wasnt the fact that we are both journalists and she was looking to feature local food places in the area. She The place is one step above a Harvester, and is not the kind we usually frequent, so it was even more amazing to get treated by a barely literate barperson as dodgy reprobates. Suffice it to say my opinion of their customer service is that it is sub zero with staff seemingly trained by the "fawlty towers" school of licensed trade management. If you like being publicly humiliated its the place to go. If you dont give it a very wide berth....by the way the chippy across the street is fab :-)
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Oh how the mighty have fallen.....What was once the best pub in Tunbridge Wells is no more. The rot set in when Green King took the place over, dispensed with the Harveys and introduced their own bland and badly kept beers. A succession of fairly clueless managers with a 'don't care' attitude has seen a further deterioration in the quality of the beer, sport is no longer shown and the food is awful. This pub is located in one of the most characterful and affluent areas of Tunbrdge Wells and should be a goldmine. Clearly it isnt and is eerily quiet on weekdays as a result. My advice is to avoid it at all costs and head to the Grove and the Duke of York, both of which serve well kept Harveys and are run by people that actually care.
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What is wrong with the landlord and the establishment at this pub? Something is very wrong. I arrived with my family after an afternoon on the pantiles. They asked us if we were interested in eating. We declined and ordered only drinks saying the kids wanted to try the fish and chip shop across the road. The moment we mentioned this they became offensive and said words in front of the children that I was quite stunned at. If they have a grudge with the shop across the road and it's seeming popularity then they shouldn't take it out on innocent bystanders. This place looks great inside but as far as hospitality goes it is quite frankly the worse place I have ever entered in my life. Avoid like the plague!!!
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Great pub, used to do a great pub quiz on Sunday nights with free sandwiches which was excellent. Not been in years, must pop back...
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Shame about the Greene King as this place has much going for it. Lively, lovely old pub with great interior and in a really attarctive location. Worth going to if only to get fish and chips from across the road. They are never less than excellent.
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Seems to be a Greene King pub (but not 'branded' as such), and now green on the outside rather than red as shown in the photograph. Reasonable pint of Highgate Stocking Filler, but could have done without the flashing LEDs on the pump clip. OK, but nothing special (try the nearby Grove Tavern for a nice pint of Harveys instead).
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It's OK, there's some reasonable beer but I think it's kept too cold, don't know about the food, only ever been in for a quick one in the evening.
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Well it's no wonder the landlord is encouraging punters to eat takeaway on the premises cos the food in this place is truly horrendous. I had one of the worse pub meals I have ever had. I needed a drink just to take the taste of cremated onions away. I guess that's one way of ensuring you sell more beverage. The ale on offer has gone downhill too. This could still be a gem of a pub if the landlord got serious about it. Nice open fire.
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Unusually friendly place with a great fish n chip shop across the road. The sweet little old grey haired pot bellied rotund landlord actively encourages people to eat fish and chips on the pub tables outside. They have an arrangement! Come and partake! Great real ale house with a real friendly touch!
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Oh dear, no reason to drink here anymore as all the nice beers have gone now, who wants to drink beers Greene King pretends are brewed by someone else. No Harveys, No Timmy Taylors any more, no my custom now.Real shame.
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This is our local and it ain't bad at that - good atmosphere and food isn't too bad either (standard pub fayre). Fun pub quiz on a Sunday night.
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I live 1 minute from the compasses, so as my local I might be slightly biased. I admit I have never eaten there but I have heard from other friends that the food is very good.
It has a great atmosphere and I don't agree with the comment about it attracting chavs. Everyone in there seems to be at least 20+ and I haven't seen any chavs in there. In the winter it has a great feel about it, with the log fires and in the summer it is great to sit out in the garden (if you can get a seat, it is quite small)
Great pub, had many good nights there.
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This is Keane's favourite pub in the world. Other than that, it's really nice.
It used to have the best pub quiz in the UK (not been for a few years, mind). And who cares about what the food's like? Pubs are for drinking beer in, not eating.
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Great pub. Lovely bar snacks, good beer, lovely aura about the place. Avoid the pub quiz though - it's low-brow culture at it's worst.
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This pub is no good now. Greene King have killed it since taking out Harvey's and now its lost everything that was good about it
anonymous - 30 Dec 2006 18:03 |
Could be a really nice little pub. Lovely building, good beer, reasonable food. Shame about the brawling drugged up chavs that frequent the place.
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Excellent pub. Good beer, friendly staff and a nice old feel to it. Perfect sunday afternoon venue. Great leather seats too!
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food appalling.
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My favourite pub in TW - a proper pub where you can get a decent beer and prop up the bar having a chat: yes, the food times can be somewhat erratic, but hey, of you want to eat good food, go to a restaurant. Excellent place.
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took 45 minutes for them to heat a soup up in the microwave... "the chef was on his own" ... yet the pub is empty.... how odd?!
but, nice place all the same!
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Have to say that it's full of "village" idiots. The food comes out of the micro-wave or deep fat and it gets sub zero in the winter.
Oh, and it's now illegal to drink in parks and public places so....Not really that great afterall.
It is the oldest pub in Tunbridge Wels though.
Fazza - 12 Jan 2005 17:31 |
Yes i too think its the best pub in twells and tonbridge, great at all times of the day, loadsa room, loadsa food.
Jack - 15 Jul 2004 12:34 |
The best pub in Tunbridge Wells!...fairly quiet, no trouble or 18 year olds and opposite best chip shop in town. Excellent in summertime, you can drinks into the park and be fully relaxed. There is also a lovely barmaid, which is always nice!
bp - 30 Jan 2004 22:42 |
It backs onto a park, it's sweet and has log fires in the winter. It's opposite the town's best chip shop, shows footballl and rugby matches, though not intrusively, has a barbecue on Sundays and you can normally find a seat somewhere. Sometimes short-staffed, it doesn't seem to matter when you're this relaxed.
Marsh - 11 Jun 2003 17:53 |
