Pub where prices stay in time warp

Chancellor Alistair Darling may be taking more money out of our pockets – but there is one Black Country pub where dinner and a pint still costs less than a fiver.

The Vine on Delph Road in Brierley Hill has hardly changed since it opened 125 years ago – and the price of some of their food has not changed in 18 years.

The pub, known locally as the Bull and Bladder, serves up a plate of faggots, steak and mushroom pie or cottage pie, all with chips and peas for £2.50. Those wanting a lighter bite can enjoy a pork pie, sandwich or cornish pasty for £1. And the beer – Batham's brewed next door to the pub – costs just £1.80 for a pint of mild and £2 for bitter. Not only is the food typical Black Country fayre, but it is set out as though you were walking into someone's front room for a buffet at a family gathering.

Assistant manager Eileen Harwood, who has been at the pub for 31 years, serves up the home-cooked food, which is laid out on a table for people to pick and choose what goes on their plate. Sitting on the patterned table cloth are plates filled with tasty pork pies, cornish pasties, faggots, meat pies and chips.

There are also plates of traditional sandwich fillings such as cheese, ham, beef and onion.

It all adds to the feeling of being in a welcome time warp.

Brothers Gordon and Keith Steele from Orchard Hills in Walsall visit the pub once a week.

"The company is good, the food is great and the beer is fantastic," says Keith, aged 77. Melvyn Wood, manager for 18 years, says: "Our regulars travel from all over and we used to have someone who came over from Coventry every day just for a pint of beer.

"Sandwiches cost just £1 and in the 18 years I have been here the price has never gone up and there is no way I'm going to put it up now."

Peter Tart, aged 67, from Wordsley says he left the Black Country in 1975 – but the pull of Batham's beer brought him back to Dudley.

"From 1975 until two years ago I lived in South Africa and then Milton Keans," he says. "When my wife and I retired we moved back to the Black Country and on my first day back I popped into the Bull and Bladder for a pint – and it was the same as when I left".