Pubs and Bars / Pub of the Week
Pub of the Week: The Merchants Arms
“Open as usual” said a sign on the outside of the Merchants Arms for more than four months, while it was covered in scaffolding and half-boarded up since a car crashed into it in September.
The pub actually reopened the day after the accident and once inside the only sign that something was amiss was a board covering one half of the front windows, before it was recently removed.
On a Wednesday night, as the sound of rain mixed with the traffic from the busy Hotwell Road, friends in groups of two talked animatedly as a couple of locals propped up the bar.
The inside of the Merchants Arms before the front wall was fixed
“I said, ‘you can’t turn around here, you have to go back around the roundabout’,” one white-haired gentleman said, sharing a packet of cheese and onion crisps with his companion as they both perused the latest issue of Pints West magazine.
Nearby, two more friends spoke about YoBikes and skateboarding, with one of them admitting that he will miss this corner of Bristol when moving to Easton in the new year.
Hotwells is certainly a Bristol enclave well populated with pubs, with the Pump House, Nova Scotia, Bear and Rose of Denmark all within a few hundred yards, and the hope that a new custodian can once again be found for the Adam & Eve.
The Merchants Arms is a former Bath Ales pub which although now a free house still has Gem and Barnsey on cask, alongside the current offers of Palmers Best Bitter and Goats Milk from the Church End Brewery.
If you’re hungry, there are also pork pies, pasties, ham and cheese rolls, and Scotch eggs at this Hotwells pub very much still open for business.
The Merchants Arms, 5 Merchants Road, Hotwells, Bristol, BS8 4PZ
0117 904 0037
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