Every Pub in Brighton Project

The plan - try and visit every pub in Brighton. See this post for a slightly longer explanation.

First we need to set the definition of both what exactly counts as a pub and what exactly counts as Brighton.

(Scroll to the bottom for the map if you aren’t interested in the rationale. Or read all of the Every Pub in Brighton Project posts to date.)

1 // What counts as a pub?

Firstly, what is a pub? You might think this is the sort of question you end up asking several pints deep at your local but I need to define what a pub is for this project.

CAMRA’s definition of a pub is covered by these 4 points (with a few caveats):

“1. is open to the public without membership or residency

2. serves draught beer or cider without requiring food be consumed

3. has at least one indoor area not laid out for meals

4. allows drinks to be bought at a bar (i.e., not only table service)”

— CAMRA's Definition of a Pub

Which I think I’m going to use here. I would like to add 'predominantly’ to the start of point 2 so I don’t have to visit all of the cocktail bars Brighton has to offer (there are loads) that only serve old gassy lagers on draught - this is a beer blog after all but we will probably play a bit fast and loose with this. Basically, it’s entirely at my discretion. Great caveat.

2 // What counts as Brighton?

Helpfully, the data we are using pretty much solves this one - we are essentially going to use everywhere in the data with a location of ‘Brighton & Hove’. This covers basically all of the city of Brighton & Hove but not the unitary authority itself. With a few extra additions thrown in as I see fit that might breach the city boundaries (I want to check out some pubs outside of these parameters so this is an excuse to include them). Again, great caveat.

Pub list

Liberty Games published some analysis they carried out to find which British city has the most pubs per square mile, so let’s use their data as a starting point.

They collated their information from GetTheData - a website that organises UK open data into location-based dashboards, surfaces the data available, and signposts the source. So we can see this data is derived from the Food Standard Agency's Food Hygiene Ratings and the ONS Postcode Directory. Thanks GetTheData/Liberty Games!

I grabbed an updated copy of the data from GetTheData and removed everything not related to Brighton & Hove. The data taken is from February 2022 so chances are some of these places may have closed 6 months later. There’s also every chance a pub may have opened between now and then so I’ll do my best to add them in as and when that happens.

I then set about applying the above criteria to the list to tidy it up - some places were listed more than once (due to the restaurant and bar being separate entities), several membership clubs, a few casinos, a few strip clubs and a whole heap of cocktail bars were omitted. I then checked online to see if each pub was still in business and open.

You can view the Google Spreadsheet of the data below - there is a tab of the raw data, a tab with my justifications on if a venue is a pub or not and then the definitive Pub List.

Every Pub in Brighton Project data

Every Pub in Brighton Project Map

Finally, I mapped all of the pubs from the data to a Google Map (told you this was coming), which you can view below. When doing this, I noticed several pubs missing from the data list so added them in manually. Giving us a total of:

220 pubs to visit
(This may increase/decrease as time passes if I deem a venue to not be a ‘pub’ in the definition we are using here or if a new venue opens up that isn’t accounted for.)

As I visit each one the icon will turn from red to green and I’ll add a number to the description so I can keep a track of the order. I might even add a link to the mini-review of each one eventually. The map will be the most up-to-date/accurate as I probably won’t check the data list from this point onwards.

View on Google Maps

Have we missed a pub? If so, get in touch and let me know.