Stocks for Churchtown

The site of Stocks, a new micropub for Southport.
Photo from Google street view.

It looks as though we may be getting another micropub, or beer shop, in Southport, this time in the northern urban village of Churchtown. Subject to planning permission, Stocks will be opened on Manor Road, near the roundabout with Botanic Road, and will sell "a variety of high quality bottled beers, cask ales and keg beers for consumption on the premises and for take away". While they intend to stock beers from around the world, they say there will be an emphasis on local brews. Wine and soft drinks will also be available.

Churchtown isn't a beer desert: there are two old pubs within five minutes' walk of the proposed site of Stocks: the Bold and the Hesketh. I wrote about them both here last year. Both serve real ale, but neither has a particularly adventurous range. I assume what they supply suits their own customers, but there is a different type of customer to whom beer shops or micropubs such as the Stocks tend to appeal: drinkers of real ale, craft beer and increasingly available unusual bottled beers for whom the familiar regional brews have a limited attraction. I can't see that either existing pub need have much to fear from this new beer outlet: on the contrary, it may make Churchtown more of a destination for drinkers with three pubs within a short walk of each other, especially as they are on a direct and frequent bus route (the 49) from the centre of Southport.

The name Stocks is after the set of stocks dating from 1741 that can be found by the wall of the nearby St Cuthbert’s Church which overlooks the village green.

This is part of a series of articles that I am writing for the CAMRA column in our local paper, the Southport Visiter. Previous reviews are here.