Knights Lodge - Corby

The famous 'Drinking With A Helmet' conundrum

For the handful of readers that don't know what Good Beer Guide Ticking is, here's a very short resume omitting the more technical aspects of the obsession. Good Beer guide tickers aim to visit and have a drink in every pub in the current edition of CAMRA's guide to the best real ale pubs in Britain, ideally visiting them all before the next guide comes out and adds a whole bunch more to tick. A simple enough task you might imagine, how many of these 'Good Beer Pubs' can there be?

I've followed their needlessly slow progress for quite some time now and it's become apparent how stubbornly reluctant they are to actually finish the job. No excuse too feeble, no obstacle too avoidable in their never-ending quest to just miss opening time, arrive marginally too late for a connecting bus service, or endlessly revisit favoured pubs rather than get on with the task at hand. It's clear to me that they simply don't want to finish the quest, and frankly why would they, pubs are just too great aren't they!

But to prove my point and show just how easy the task is in reality, I've decided to tack 'Every Good Beer Guide Pub In Corby' onto the already onerous task of Every Pub In Corby, and here it is, the Knight's Lodge, Good Beer Guide 1982, in Corby. Pink highlighter pen poised...

Now if this blog has demonstrated anything at all of note, it's that Corby is clearly a Beer Town to rival most towns of a similar size and uniquely Scottish background. Heritage Keg, Real Ale (singular), Craft(ish) Beer, Guinness, Carling, I think we can all agree that the choice is truly impressive! But who knew Corby was at the epicentre of the nascent real ale revival, as evidenced by it's strong position in the 1982 Good Beer Guide shown above. So, in homage to its status as a solid CAMRA pub, the rest of this post will be written in the style of a 1980’s Good Beer Guide description:

'Historic ironstone pub noted for its food.'
 

What! You want more?...

The Knights Lodge could well be Corby's contender for oldest pub in the country, and whilst it almost certainly isn't, it is proper old. As evidenced by this attractive scroll in the bar which suggests a date of around 1200AD. Back then Corby was little more than a clearing in the Rockingham Forest, the hunting playground of the rich and famous who used the nearby castle as a kind of upmarket Travelodge. That makes the Knights Lodge the flat-roof estate 'Inn' of the area, a proper pub to rival the gastro foppery of the big house up the road. Somewhere the less wealthy Knights of Old could kick back, enjoy a few tankards of Smoothflow Mead, chance their arm at Ye Weekly Mutton Wager, and catch up on the Easter Bottle Kicking results on the Inn's big-screen parchment. A bit of a rough-hole too I'd imagine. A place where if your Tabard didn't fit you could certainly expect trouble from the local 'Jousters'! Not at all like the Knights Lodge of today I might add, as welcoming a hostelry as you or I could imagine. Anyway, have a read of the history (above), then join me for a some Fyne Fayre on a Friday night, with a few good friends.

Tucked away in the heart of Corby's Beanfield estate, just off the mighty Gainsborough Road in fact, the Knights Lodge cuts a slightly incongruous figure in amongst the modern housing and nearby Beanfield Water Towers. That it's survived at all is testament to sympathetic planning given that it sits on a substantial plot, originally a moated site, and a fair few houses could have been squeezed in to replace a crumbly old Lodge house. As it is the building is Grade II listed and in very good condition overall, so it's future seems secure.

Baggie Pete getting the beers in

Proper Pubs have Meat Raffles!

The first thing you'll notice when walking into the pub is the fantastic (listed?) carpet, easily the best I've seen in Corby thus far. A homage to Blockbusters if I'm correct! 'Ye Olde' is the style of the pub, though the fussy fake medievalry of previous incarnations is thankfully long gone. It's a good basic boozer, good value food the big attraction, which is what attracted us on a Friday night. And the Doom Bar of course, which I have to say was in very fine form, a triumphant return to the 2023 Good Beer Guide a mere formality I'd imagine. Previously one of two Everards Brewery houses in Corby, there's now little to indicate who owns the pub though it's clearly not Everards. Two real ales are promised on the CAMRA WhatPub site, perhaps the second will reappear in the Summer when the grassy beer garden fills out with a few more locals.

It was an unseasonably warm night when we went, the two (2) open fires thankfully turned down to 'Off' on this occasion, but this is definitely a pub for the chilly Winter nights. Now I don't usually eat things in a pub, I find it a needless waste of valuable stomach capacity when there's great beer to be sloshed down. But our friends Baggie Pete and Saxy Jane insisted on it, and I'm nothing if not a go-with-the-flow kind of guy, particularly when comprehensively out-voted (bah!). Besides, the food looked hearty enough for the hungriest of Friday night Knights (see what I did there!). Big tasty food of the kind that would represent our weekly rations under normal circumstances. A Lasagne that arrived on the adjacent table was a family portion by anyone's standards. Desserts sir? Not this week thanks!

So a cracking little pub, a good crowd of early-doorers in, a picture postcard ironstone pub of huge importance historically, with an attractive beer garden and very good beer. Though curiously no football on the telly! Were we really in Corby? One word of caution though! Pub-goers of a more 'sensitive' nature spiritually, of which I know there are many who follow this blog, would be well advised to go with a friend given that the Knights Lodge is famously haunted by two (2) ghostly apparitions in the form of a young girl and a Hooded Monk. I don't believe in these things of course, but was it coincidence that a piece of Chocolate Torte was knocked into Saxy Jane's milkshake in Paletto Lounge that night, under circumstances that still haven't been fully explained!...

Corby Good Beer Guide ticking, done!