Lovely old unspoilt pub. A little bit outside the main street. But not difficult to find. Mostly locals. Solid range of different ales.

Typical inner city, three-roomed boozer close to the bus station. This place probably hasnt changed much in my lifetime and its been a while since I was 21! If it relied on the lager drinkers it would probably have gone out of business years ago. There is always a good selection of regularly rotating real ales here and plenty of people who appreciate them. The. Belgian selection would keep most people happy for a while too. The ale is well kept and always fresh. The staff are friendly and I did appreciate the quality 80’s music on the jukebox at the time. If you are in the city it’s well worth checking out what they have.

Excellent city centre(ish) boozer, my favourite place to go before the footie. Always loads of choice and great quality. Not easy to find for the newcomer unless you know Digbeth Coach Station. The pub has plenty of character and Characters. I love it.
Dec ’12 a much needed update from me, there has been a slight change in management recently and the pub does seem a little less like the pub I always loved. There is now a Juke box, don’t remember that before. The choice of beers remains as good and the building is more or less the same but the feel isn’t what it was and it was particularly empty on our visit. Still very good but things have to move on.

For a Saturday evening visit, not very busy. Doesn’t seem to have moved with the times very much, gave the impression of a gradual decline.

The Bateman’s XB caught my eye as we walked in on a wet and cold Saturday afternoon in Aug 2009. My pint was in fine order and I sat down to look around this old establishment with its equally old customers. Most of the clientele looked a little worn around the edges and down on their luck. The whole area is being re-developed and the only building that seems to have remained untouched is this lovely old gem of a pub. The place could do with a good scrub, but as it is in the middle of a building site it obviously has trouble staying clean, a bit like the locals. The one bloke behind the bar was friendly enough; the regulars kept to themselves, we (four of us) dried out and soaked up the place and its Bateman’s XB. Once the area is re-built I hope to return here, but it is so isolated at the moment the walk out to it doesn’t seem worth the effort because there are plenty of good pubs closer together in Birmingham.

Visited on 01/02/10. Traditional, multi-roomed pub a short walk from the Bull Ring. Pretty quiet on a Monday afternoon. 5 ales were on offer at the start of the week, and the ones from Birds and ABC were pretty good. Service was a bit on the perfunctory side. Ok.

This review was written for beerintheevening on 30th December 2008 and has been entered for lack of recent RB updates. Annual pilgrimage to the Anchor during a crawl on 29th December 2008. I was struck by the lack of clientele - it seemed much quieter than I had ever seen, and no one was playing pool. The time would be 2200-2230. Nevertheless the pub itself remains unchanged from a year ago, and it is, as the previous reviewer describes it, a proper pub. From a wide, varied choice of seasonal, festive beers, I selected a half-pint of Buntingford SILENT NIGHT Ɣ.1%)which turned out to be a highgly quaffable, bitter, amber ale. Wishing the pub the very best and hoping that business picks up very soon. It is well worth going the extra mile to visit this pub.

Had wanted to visit this place for a while and took the opportunity when the Wellington had one of its beer festivals to take a walk down to the Anchor too. Excellent multi roomed old fashioned English pub with a great choice of ales (they had a best of the fest feature where they had invited back the most popular beers of the past few months)

was for me the best pub in brum until the welly opened its doors. was my local for 3 years so has good memories for me. Still excellent especially on fest brewery weekends. Good beer promo card too buy 6 get one free. jukebox good too. classic interior creates very homely atmos epecially in the winter.

Short walk from New Street, fantastic building with stained and etched glass, wonderful traditional bar, varied range of cask ales including Oakham, Barbar on draught too, staff couldn’t tell a stout from an IPA but every place has an odd bod on an odd day. Worth the trip doen there