No. 99 The Dublin Packet

Visited on 29/9/11. Let’s cut to the chase. The gents bogs in here are an absolute friggin’ disgrace. The ceiling is covered in black mould, the cubicle door is covered in graffiti (‘der Lache roolz’ apparently) and the urinals leak. Just to highlight this final point, a litter bin has even been strategically placed under one of the U-bends to catch the drips. As a consequence, there’s a vile stench that permeates the entire pub. It’s verging on the primeval to be honest. If ever there was a place in Chester where you could still contract bubonic plague, this would be it. The tragedy is, this could be a great pub with just a modest sum made available for a refurb. It’s small, atmospheric, largely in it’s original state and is in a great location. It’s easy to imagine looking out over a busy market square in the Victorian era or propping up the bar in the 1960s and chatting to iconic footballer Dixie Dean who ran this place for a while after he retired from the game - for anyone interested, there’s a sort of shrine to the great man in one corner of the pub, but it’s made from reproduction stuff and is a bit cheesy to be honest. A simple blue plaque would be better. Obviously, they don’t do real ale here, so we drank brownkeg. It was practically stagnant. This could be another boozer on the ‘at risk’ list. Hope we haven’t given it the kiss of (black) death.