Social & Ex-Servicemens Club - Corby Village

Corby pubs are, for the most part, tastefully refurbished versions of their awesome 60's/70's former selves. Which is not to say that they're not great now of course, it's just that most of them have succumbed to the modern trend for comfort, cleanliness, quality food, and the kind of drinks people actually want to drink that's blighting pubs everywhere. Trends eh! What happened to the good old days of Mild, Bitter, Woodpecker and Cherry B, and you’ll jolly-well like it. If you want to see Corby at its late 20th Century best, you'll need to visit one of its many Social Clubs, and even then you'll find most of them in a 21st century refurbished state, as if anyone in the 21st century actually wants that!

Corby del Mar

Corby Village itself has not escaped the trend for refurbishing pubs and clubs in the way customers actually want them, sad as that may be for those of us who want them just the way they were, back in the war years, preferably a bit earlier... The Cardigan Arms for example is a peerless urban village local offering everything it's locals want and more, with a side-order of televised Football and Horses. Football and Horses with everything in fact! The nearby White Hart is an attractive ironstone heritage pub on the outside, but inside it's been thoroughly refurbished, spruced up, and scrubbed down for modern Corby tastes, and the first in the village to offer the holy grail of Craft Beer, and yet...

Folk of a certain age (that'll be me and almost everyone I know) all want a bit of unreconstructed 60's in our life, and I can now reveal that Corby Social & Ex-Servicemen's Club is the place to find it. As proper an unspoilt vintage social club as you'll find anywhere. Busy, basic, and bloody cheap too.

Seriously, I can't tell you how cheap it is! I can't tell you because by the time I visited the club I was already four pints down, and at that critical stage of the afternoon where you just hand over the cash and blithely walk away, happy that you got something of note in the small change. But cheap it must be because the beer offering is from notorious Yorkshire cheapskates Samuel Smith.

Now don't get me started on Sam Smiths! This is a pub blog not a beer blog, and as such I'll drink anything, anywhere, anytime after 11am (earlier by appointment). It’s a service wot I do for you dear reader, and I'll leave the judging to others more qualified, demarcation and all that. All I will say is that I've always found the Extra Stout to be as good as, if not slightly better than a similarly tasteless Stout from a well-known brewery in Dublin. Which is, if I'm honest, damning with faint praise, but any port in a boozy storm. Have a look at that lineup (above) and suggest something better... Ex-act-ly! Full-pint measure fans will of course swoon at the head on that too, though if I’m honest I’d have been happy enough with four fingers of undrinkable froth, sometimes less is more with a cheap nitro stout…

Moving on, what do we know about Corby's Social & Ex-Services Club. Not a lot in truth. It’s a classic brick built social club on the edge of the old village, the certificate in the foyer suggests it became CIU affiliated in 1938, which is just before the start of the second world war though presumably it was established as an ex servicemen's club prior to this date. Two substantial rooms are served from a central bar, and there's a similarly substantial function room to the rear, and I mean substantial! The bigger of the two rooms (below) has a couple of Pool Tables, and a trophy cabinet over the servery that suggests a habit of winning, though for what exactly I couldn't say. It's one of those places where the furniture looks older than the building, the customers a fair bit more robust than the false ceiling. The carpet and parquet flooring in the smaller of the rooms suggest 'Lounge', though don't quote me on that, and oh the tales and spillages that carpet could tell! I loved it of course. You'll love it! No really, you'll really love it, it's a proper working persons social club in the oldie style, and with the full range of cheap Sam Smiths beers, bench seating, and lots of lovely Corby folk. A winning combination I think we can all agree.

I popped in on the day of the mighty Pole Fair, a once-in-twenty year jamboree that's been celebrated in its current form since 1585, more of which later. Busy enough, but a welcome respite from the crowds, queues, and candyfloss in the village. In fact it was like a secret club that only the locals knew about, just enough off the beaten track to fly below the radar of the more casual Pole Fair-sters, but open and welcoming to those canny dogs in the know. Needless to say I wasn't even remotely in the know until Corby's premier wordsmith Chuck The Poet tipped me off in a brief encounter on a railway bridge (not what you're thinking!). I guess he's a regular here.

Straight in, no queueing, oriented and served within a couple of minutes, out and drinking in the afternoon sun in the time it takes a nitro stout to settle. This must be a Pole Fair record I guess, and I commend it to the Fair and the Village. But don't tell anyone else, it's our little secret for the next Pole Fair (AD 2042).

The substantial Function Room with Stage

What the club is all about...