Breweries from outside the Midlands region are included as, particularly nowadays, beers from other parts of the country are sold across the counters in the Midlands. The section is growing as more images are obtained - not all relevant to the area but, hey, I love beer and it's great fun.

Statto Corner 130 Pages 145,885 Words 190 Pubs Featured 482 Pub Photographs 78 Breweries Featured 51 Brewery Photographs 96 Other Photographs 115 Inn Signs 109 Beer Labels 114 Pumpclips 22 Maps 15 Building Plans

About the author
This site is run by Kieron McMahon, a bloke with a passion for pubs and drinking a top notch pint of beer. This has evolved into writing a bit about my experiences and, as the years have rolled by, a fascination for the histories of the boozers. But more of that in a bit.... this is me pictured in 1968 when I didn't like beer. The fact that I found beer revolting at one time will shock those who know me now - but it's true when I was a wee whippersnapper I hated the stuff. My mum and dad once kept an off licence and general store in the Black Country and I can remember one Christmas that, when I finally got permission from the old man to have a sip of his Ansell's, I nearly wretched on the stuff. "Ugh, it's 'orrible" I said as I almost spat it out - couldn't quite do the latter as I'd have been sent to bed before my deadline of when the end theme to Coronation Street kicked in. How I hated that tune! And, unlike today where hoards of brats are running around the pubs, I hardly ever visited a boozer when I was a kid. It was on the odd occasion when my parents nipped in for a few drinks on the way back from somewhere exotic like Stourport that I was allowed a bag of crisps and a bottle of pop whilst I sat outside in the cold as they enjoyed a beer in the boozer. Pubs were simply places where you were bored waiting for them to come out or where you played with some other little urchin in the beer garden. 

I was born in The Lye, a Black Country town in Worcestershire once packed with old boozers. Always a little impatient, I was born four weeks premature in a shabby two-up, two-down hovel in The Dock. They had to go and fetch the midwife who'd supped a skinful in the bottom Bell - probably the reason why I've got the most ridiculous belly button in the western hemisphere! My old man was a steel erector in those days - looking for work, he left County Monaghan after the war. Named Michael Kieron, he named me Kieron Michael - how original. He married Wolverhampton-born Shirley Green in the early-mid 1950's and they somehow wound up in The Lye. I was born in September 1958, making me slightly younger than Madonna - and almost as pretty. I'd look great with that tin cone pointy bra thing over my tits.

I'm extremely proud to hail from a grotty Black Country town such as The Lye. Lye Waste was first settled by gypsies around the River Stour. These early settlers built crude mud dwellings centred on Lye Cross. In 1699, 103 such dwellings were recorded as standing on Waste Bank. Subsequently, Lye was often called Mud City. This term was first recorded in 1780 when the Birmingham historian, William Hudson, wrote 'If the curious reader chooses to see a picture of Birmingham in the time of the Britons (Celts), he will find one in the turnpike road between Halesowen and Stourbridge called the Lie Waste, alias Mud City. The houses stand in every direction, composed of one large and ill-formed brick scooped into a tenement burnt by the sun and often destroyed by the frost.' Describing the inhabitants, he added 'The children at the age of three months take on a singular hue from the sun and the soil which continues for life. We may as well look for the moon in a claypit as for stays and white linen in the city of mud.' In the 19th century the so-called "King of Lye" Constantine Folkes became very unpopular after he attempted to establish a proper observance of the Lord's Day. Indeed, religion was late arriving in The Lye which adds to the town's mythology. One imagines church leaders in neighbouring town's not daring to venture into The Lye for fear of heathens! The Lye Wasters (as they were known) were widely regarded as a lawless and Godless lot. Naturally, I like to boast that I'm a true waster!

Despite the fact that I was born in Worcestershire, I grew up across the River Stour in Staffordshire after my parents bought an off licence on Reddal Hill Road, between Cradley Heath and Old Hill. In those days (early-mid 1960's) beer was dispensed through handpulls and jugs. I can still picture my father hammering the tap home in the barrel down in the cellar. And they were barrels not firkins or kilderkins. Customers would come into the shop with a bag full of empty pop bottles or suchlike and my mum or dad would pull the beer into a jug and transfer the ale into the bottles - quite tricky when the beer was full of condition. For pocket money, it was my elder sister's job to re-stock the shelves with bottles of Mackeson, Manns, Guinness and Light Brown and me, being the wee eeegit, had to take all the empties and fill up the crates to be taken back to the brewery. The offie was free-of-tie but my parents seemed to buy lots of products from Ansell's of Aston and in return we got loads of goodies throughout the year. For example, the sales rep would always bring a big turkey at Christmas.

Most yoofs these days seem to start drinking by the time they're ten years old. In my case, I had to wait until the ripe old age of sixteen. The Hawthorns on The Ross in Blackheath must have been desperate for custom in 1974 and turned a blind eye to delinquents like me asking to be served. So teaming up with Pip Oldaker, Terry Parkes, Steve Attewell and other mates from Rowley Regis Grammar School, we were able to use the bar frequented by the town's old lags. They used to enjoy seeing us suffer by offering us their Capston cigarettes and watching us coughing and spluttering between sips of our Ansell's Mild. Another haunt of our misspent schooldays was the Foxhunt in Old Hill's Garretts Lane where we'd drink Banks's Mild in the back room. Most of the pubs in my area were tied and sold Banks's, M&B or Ansell's. Although my local was the Waggon and Horses on Reddal Hill Road, I became a regular of The Bell on St.Anne's Road, Cradley Heath. This was an Ansell's house and I liked their bitter a lot in those days.

One of the regrets of my teen years was the fact I didn't have a mentor who could steer me towards places selling Batham's and Simpkiss - I would have to wait a few years to experience the delights of these smaller breweries. I sort of fell into the crib team for The Bell and I would play away fixtures in many Banks's or M&B pubs. However, even the M&B pubs sold proper cask ale in those days and the Springfield Bitter was fair to middling. My beer horizons were broadened in 1977 when I left home for Yorkshire and discovered Theakston's beer when it was something to behold. Punk didn't seem to get as far north as Northallerton but The Fleece was a pub with beer to make your hair turn spikey. Other discoveries - and remember I was but a mere novice - were Marston's Pedigree in the Cross Keys at Bellerby and Samuel Smith's in the Oak Tree at Catterick.

These were the days when to sample different beers you had to travel a bit and by 1980 I was living and working in Hampshire. Most of the pubs seemed to flog Courage beers so I sought out a few watering holes that sold Ind Coope Bitter from Romford. However, I wasn't far from Surrey so it was possible to find exotic treats in Farnham where pubs like the Queen's Head sold Gales. There was one particular pub just outside Aldershot that sold an extremely dark mild - black almost. We'd be in the boozer just after the gaffer took the bolt off the door and we'd drink around twelve pints of the stuff whilst playing bar billiards, then head off for a curry. Invincible - that's what you are in your early 20's. You can drink up to two gallons and still be up for a monster dish of spices - and feel nothing the next morning. Up for a cooked breakfast even. If Farnham was considered exotic then I was in for a culture shock in 1981 when I headed to Berlin for a few years to sample Berliner Weiße and a lot of Schultheiss Pilsener. After drinking a lot of this cold fizzy stuff for a few years I found it difficult to get back into the swing of things when I arrived back in England to drink 'warm' bitters. Quite often I'd find myself ordering a lager - there, I've admitted it.

A music devotee all my life, in 1989 I opened a record shop in Dudley's High Street. Not dissimilar to the shop featured in Nick Hornby's "High Fidelity", it was a slog making money but was rewarded by the number of interesting people that walked through the door. I still drink with some of the friends that I made in those five years. A weekly ritual used to be the short pilgrimage to the Lamp Tavern where a good measure of Batham's Bitter was consumed. Personally, it was the road to salvation - or ruin, because ever since those times I've been trying to find a beer that can match the golden ale produced on The Delph. Another boozer that I enjoyed in the early 90's was the Wharf at Old Hill, a Scottish and Newcastle pub but kept by an enthusiastic beer bloke who sold lots of interesting ales. Still drinking with old school pal Pip Oldaker, trying the beers on the chalkboard was a very hit and miss affair. However, I developed a taste for ales like Hook Norton Old Hooky. This was also the era of the Allied-operated Holt, Plant and Deakin empire and fine pints of Entire could be found in a variety of outlets.

There was a key event in the early 1990's that really got me interested in real ales. A couple called Trimble and Spike took over the already-excellent Why Not Inn at Cradley and, suddenly, a local pub of mine started to stock beers with strange names that I'd never heard of before. Apart from The Bell in the 1970's, this was the first pub I used to frequent at least three times a week. And every time I walked into the pub Spike, a nutcase and beer monster, used to collar me and encourage me to drink all the strange brews he'd had delivered. It was a fabulous period of enlightenment though I'll never know how I managed to stagger home after a night on something like Dent Kamikaze. For some bizarre reason, I decided to undertake a post-graduate course (I'm a geographer by the way) in Further and Higher Education. My days as a teacher and lecturer were short-lived but it was during this time that I met my partner Emma. My first tactic in getting her interested in real ale was to introduce her to Batham's Mild. A decade later, she's a complete real ale nutcase and is a devotee of the beers of Belgium. Indeed, during our extensive travels in search of that next great pub or beer, Belgium is a regular destination for us. This is me pictured again in Café de la Paix for the 2005 Poperinge Festival of Hops. So there you are - a very brief beer biography. As for the components of the website - well, they just tie in with my own interests of geography, history, architecture, walking, cycling and sitting in a classic pub drinking a heavenly pint of beer.

I did once have a drink with George Best - it wasn't my fault, honest guvnor, but it ain't all been about drinking - I have managed to do other things in life. Being featured on John Peel's show was a highlight of my radio fame and I did once get to do Desert Island Discs - it didn't quite have the same audience figures enjoyed by Sue Lawley's guests but I hope somebody was listening to Radio Shropshire that evening! Backstage with Black Umfolosi was a hoot and I've managed to meet some of my heroes like Billy Bragg and Richard Thompson. Saddest of all was a short conversation and shaking the frail hand of Townes Van Zandt not long before he died. Not that all my encounters with the rich and famous have been with people I'd like to share my last beer with - I remember trying to tell a crap joke to Jim Bowen - his face was a picture. I once got a promotion on the basis of trying to headbutt the Radio 1 D.J. Simon Bates whilst he was on stage (the bouncers got to me first) and I've even had dinner with Joan Collins - how freaky is that? Incredibly - for a beer drinker that is - I have been an active sportsman and I guess my best physical achievement was cycling up Snowdon in 1989. Running the Berlin Marathon was a piece of cake in comparison. I've pretty much tried most things - rock climbing, abseiling, boxing, canoeing but I was only sort of good at orienteering and did have a collection of trophies before I had a bit of a life laundry. But on the latter score, it is the mountain of CD's and books that clutter the house though the dawn of the MP3 era is a possible salvation. On the cerebral front, I did once enter the National Scrabble Championships and somehow wangled my way into the quarter-finals. Trouble is, none of my friends will play with me anymore. My best friend is my partner Emma who really is a treasure. I guess there's some inevitability in the fact that many couples end up doing the same things, but we really do share a great deal - from vegetarianism, ersatz socialism, ethical values, cynicism, a broadsheet crossword, musical tastes, walking, cycling and, of course, beer - a key cornerstone of my life.