Review

Situated on the corner of Guildhall Walk and King Henry 1 Street, overlooking Guildhall Square, the building in which The Isambard Kingdom Brunel is situated was the original Gas Board Building for Portsmouth. The pub’s most unique feature are the two memorials, one to each side of the entrance at the top of the steps from the street. A tablet erected by the Executive and Employees of the Portsea Island Gas Light Company in 1921 is to the left of the doorway, and it is dedicated to the memory of the men who worked at the company and gave their lives in the Great War 1914 - 1919*; to the right of the doorway is a tablet dedicated to the memory of the men of the Portsmouth and Gosport Gas Company who gave their lives in the Second World War 1939 - 1945**.

As much as Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a legend, one of Portsmouth’s most famous sons and one of the greatest Britons of all time, JD Wetherspoon have made a grave mistake (no pun intended - many men and women who gave their lives in both wars have no grave) in not naming this pub as something befitting the brave men of the Portsea Island Gas Light Company and the Portsmouth and Gosport Gas Company, especially considering the obviousness of the memorials.

In addition to its vast and spacious interior, The Isambard Kingdom Brunel has all the trappings of a typical JD Wetherspoon pub: ornate pillars and cornices, a bookcase of tatty books, numerous booths and several fruit machines, each with its own seat - the sure sign of drinking hole frequented by hardcore boozers. The walls are adorned with the artwork of local artists (paintings that can be purchased - at a price!), there is a large, round Art Deco skylight, and an ostentatious fireplace that is surrounded by leather armchairs and portraits of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Horatio Nelson.

On 9th April 1806, Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born to Anglo-Gallic parents at 1 Britain Street, close to today’s Gunwharf Quays development. Like Charles Dickens, who was born six years later only a kilometre or so away, Brunel left the city as a child and had little to do with the place thereafter; in later life his engineering designs and constructions changed the Victorian landscape forever, he was one of the people who made Britain ’Great’, and his engineering legacy remains unchallenged to this day. Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson spent his last night in Britain at The George Hotel on Portsmouth’s High Street; the date was 13th September 1805, the eve of his departure from Portsmouth for Cape Trafalgar and only 200 days before the nearby birth of Brunel. Nelson’s remains, encased in a barrel of rum, returned to Portsmouth on 4th December 1805 aboard HMS Victory, the ship that is the greatest asset of Portsmouth today.

The façade of The Isambard Kingdom Brunel is more reminiscent of a theatre or a cinema than a Gas Board Building and is covered in floral window boxes. French windows and doors make up the pub’s entire frontage on Guildhall Walk, and one of the doors leads to the pub’s elevator. Used by staff and people who find the stairs a problem, the elevator could be used by the former to haul out drunks that have fallen asleep on the floor.

Hanging above the lengthy bar, at which the drinks are exceptionally cheap and the staff regularly undercharge, are portraits of such luminaries as the philandering diarist Samuel Pepys, who often visited Portsmouth in the seventeenth-century as secretary of the Admiralty, and Richard the Lionheart, the Crusading warrior of Christianity who vowed to rid the world of Islamic tyranny and gave Portsmouth its Muslim star and crescent heraldic crest.

Near the toilets upstairs is a Training and Conference Centre, presumably in which novice drinkers gather to confer about the merits of beer and to be instructed in its ingestion. Beer Training is easy... Once your pint of beer has been placed on the bar, position a hand around the glass and grip it tightly to prevent the beer spilling onto the floor (whether you use your left or right hand is an important decision, as this is the hand you must use for this purpose until the day you’re admitted to casualty with Cirrhosis, a disease that destroys the liver). With a firm grip on the glass, bend your elbow and left the glass of beer off the bar - keep bending your elbow until the glass is near your chin. Open you mouth slightly, place the glass on your bottom lip, tip you head back while keeping the glass in place and let the beer flow down your throat. IMPORTANT: do not return your head and glass to their original positions until the beer has completely disappeared from the glass!

The brave men of the Gas Companies who gave their lives in both wars will be raising a wry smile wherever they are, amused with the knowledge that the building in which they were once employed is now a pub and that they’re indelibly remembered in its entrance, where hundreds of beautiful, sexy women pass by them every Friday and Saturday night.

* J. Barber; W.Barber; F. Baxter; H. Bennett; G. Chalmers; E. Chandler; V.J. Course; R. Drain; J. Drain; C. Elliott; E. Gladdish; G. Jarvis; H. Lovett; T. Millett; W. New; G. Petworth; W.G. Samphier; W. Shea; C.H. Smith; A. Strugnell; F.G.H. Taylor; A. Towner; W. Tucker; H. Walker; E. Wearn; A.G. White; G.M. Wilson ; R. Woods

** F.A. Aylmer; B.A. Bartlett; L.A.D. Beabey; D. Bramble; C.D. Callum; W.H.C. Candy; H.F. Chase; A.A. Clark; W.R.J. Clark; O.N. Dyer; R.J. Henry; W. Hutchinson; E.L. Jones; L.H. Knight; R.W. Knight; H.W.G. Rennison; A.J. Short; A.E.A. Westbrook; W. Wright

Review by mr_psm