We visit a Wolverhampton pub with a great look and a nice mixture of traditional pub and cocktail bar

Some people will say they prefer the spit-and-sawdust, old-fashioned-style pub, while other people will say they want something more modern, vibrant and more suited to a younger crowd.

One pub which has mastered both styles, thanks to the enthusiasm and forward-thinking of its landlady, is The New Hampton on Riches Street in Wolverhampton.

The pub, which is a Victorian building on the edge of the city centre, mixes a traditional pub feeling inside, full of tables and seating and real ale, but also provides a cocktail vibe through a menu of cocktails, as well as work being done to convert an outdoor room into a cocktail bar.

The New Hampton sits on a street corner, surrounded by chimney pots, and has a number of rooms, from an old smoking room which has become a lounge to the main bar and a pool room.

Step outside and customers discover a very large garden, which was formerly a bowling green, and lots of seating for families and friends to enjoy.

The pub is run by landlady Pria Middleton, who recently celebrated her fourth anniversary running The New Hampton, having started out working in nightclubs and saying how her journey there had been an unexpected one.

She said: “This is my first pub and it’s a thing where I kind of dove into the deep end head first as I felt I couldn’t lose.

“I started working in nightclubs in Wolverhampton as a way to get myself through university and, after about six months, I’d worked my way up to management, but I’ve always strived to be self-employed and work for myself eventually.

“I was working here just after Covid when the pub reopened after a friend of mine was working here and rang me and offered me an interview, then the landlady who was here ended up moving to a different venue and it just felt like the right time to put my name forward.”

Ms Middleton said the previous landlady had helped her a lot, showing her the right way to run a pub, and she had been able to take those lessons and also add her own touch to things.

She said: “We started doing little things when I took over as I never wanted to lose the traditional pub feeling, but I did introduce a cocktail menu and then started doing the cocktail bar outside.

“When we do the cocktail bar in the outdoor room, it will be a place, when the weather’s nice, that we can encourage new people through the door who probably wouldn’t have come to a traditional pub.

“When someone walks in to this pub for the first time, they’ll find that everyone knows the bar staff’s names, which is a really nice and homely thing, and people are always surprised by how big the pub is when they first walk in.”

The New Hampton is a Craft Union Pub owned by Stonegate and has a wide selection of ales, with four hand pulls on at any one time, and Ms Middleton said that the pubs was Cask Marque Accredited, meaning the ales were always well kept.

Ales on offer include Hobgoblin Gold and Hobgoblin Ruby, as well as Wye Valley favourites HPA and Butty Bach, with Ms Middleton saying she listened to the customers and tried to put on what they wanted.

Lagers on tap include Birra Moretti, Cruzcampo, Carling, Peroni, Carlsberg and Fosters, plus Inch’s and two types of cider on tap, and a very varied and vast spirit selection.

Ms Middleton said The New Hampton has become a big part of her life, something she was thrilled about as she admitted to having no past history with it, and spoke about finding a family.

She said: “I think this pub is kind of a found family I wasn’t expecting to find as I didn’t have any history with this pub whatsoever.

“I’d never drunk here and hadn’t even heard of it before I started working here, but it’s become such an important part of my life and such a learning curve for me as well.

“I was 24 when I first took it over and to come in to a really well-established clientele and for them to bring me in as one of their own is really nice.”