Friday 1st April 2016

Bob Thompson

No, this pub is not in Cornwall and I haven’t made a mistake with the spelling. This is Liscard on the Wirral peninsular, administratively part of Wallasey.

A small digression. I first became aware its name from back in the days of Higson’s Brewery, sorely missed. Liz Card (sic) was a “Famous Old Higsonian”. This was a series of beer mats on which the various personalities’ names depicted were thinly-disguised pseudonyms for locations around Liverpool, such as Pierre Head, Ann Field and Wallace E Tunnel, along with many others.

Liscard is most southern part of Wallasey and is just north of the sprawling Birkenhead Docks area. The Lazy Landlord is in a parade of shops on a main road, Mill Lane, very close to Victoria Central Hospital. The premises were previously a music shop with a small recording studio.

It opened as a pub on 19th December 2014 and it is operated by Lenny Henry, who coincidentally has the same name as a famous comedian.

The pub is a treat and it is apparent that a determined attempt has been made to give a traditional pub feel to the more recent concept of the micropub. After alighting from the bus at a stop which could not be any closer, we entered and were immediately impressed by the décor. The bar counter was about half way up the pub and is on the right side of the room.

The room is rather long and thin and the front is taken up with old pews facing in from the walls with tables and loose chairs in front. The wall on the right side of the room is taken up with a fine collection of old brewery mirrors and the wall facing displayed a number of old paintings and lithographs with no particular theme, at least to me. They look good, however.

There are five hand pumps on the wooden bar counter and on the wall behind it there was a magnificent Guinness mirror surrounded by shelving. Moving further down the room there are a pair of wooden tables with comfortable-looking chairs facing each other. There are old brewery signs on the walls and this part is known as the library as there are several shelves with a lot of reading matter. I believe there is another room upstairs.

Lenny was behind the bar when I visited with Linda, John, Ted and Peter. I complimented him on his historic collection of breweriana. He said he had obtained it on E-Bay. Well, he certainly has some good stuff and told him I thought it gave the pub a bit of character.

There is one regular beer and the remainder are a selection that forever changes. The permanent fixture is Lazy Landlord Best Bitter (3.9%) which is produced for the pub by Wentwell Brewery of Derby.

The rest offered that day were: Purple Moose (Porthmadog, Gwynedd, North Wales) Dark Side of the Moose (4.6%) and Boggart Brewery (Manchester) Cascade (4.0%). Finally there were two from local Peerless Brewing of Birkenhead: Pale (3.8%) and Oatmeal Stout (5.0%).

They serve a real cider, normally from Gwynt y ddraig (Pontypridd, Glamorgan, South Wales) and there is a section of wines. There are cheese and onion cobs and I think they have packed snacks. It is dog friendly. I thought it well worth our while making the journey from Liverpool to visit it, highly recommended.

Important Information:

The Lazy Landlord, 56 Mill Lane, Liscard, Wallasey, Merseyside CH44 5UG
Tel: 07583 135616

Hours: Monday/Wednesday-Thursday 14.00-22.00; Friday-Sunday 12.00-22.00.
Tuesday: Closed

The pub is quite a long way from any station.
The way we got there was to cross from Liverpool on a Merseyrail train to Birkenhead North (destination West Kirby or New Brighton).

From there we travelled on the 10 or 10A bus route to Mill Lane (alight at the Mill Lane / Rullerton Road stop) which is outside the pub.
This route runs every 30 minutes, Monday to Saturday. No service on Sunday.
You need to walk up from Birkenhead North to Stanley Road / Wallasey Bridge Road to catch this route as it no longer runs from outside of the station.

There is another route passing the pub, the 106.
I don’t think this is of much use as it runs during daytime only and has a very strange timetable interval of 65 minutes. Also, it only connects Wallasey with the pub.