Home > Staffordshire > Smethwick > The Waterloo The Waterloo
Picture source: David Gray
The Waterloo was situated on Shireland Road. A grade-II listed building.
From The Good Pub Guide 1983:
The late Victorian grandeur here forms a background for a basic bar serving cheap beers: Mitchell & Butlers Brew XI, Mild, and Springfield Bitter on electric pump. This public bar is an uncompromising locals' beer haunt, with plain furniture and darts, television, juke box and fruit machine. But the whole room is gorgeously tiled in colourful embossed patterns from floor to high ceiling. The tilework goes down the imposing stairs to the relatively luxurious and again grandly decorated basement grill-room where you can buy a three-course meal with steak for about £6, but the more comfortable rooms of the lounge bar have more orthodox decor.
Listed building details:
Public House. 1907 by Wood and Kendrick, for Mitchells and Butlers Ltd, with minor late C20 alterations. Red brick, with buff and red terracotta dressings and enrichment, above a pink granite plinth. Slate roof, brick chimneys with terracotta banding, and a weather vane in the form of a galleon. PLAN. Sub-rectangular plan form on a corner site. Public bar in corner with parlour and billiard room behind. Basement grill room/bar. Hotel accommodation on upper floors. EXTERIOR. Edwardian Baroque style. 3 storeys above a basement. The ground floor is faced with red terracotta, having corbels from which buff terracotta pilasters rise through the upper 2 floors; these have cartouches with husk drops and grotesque faces at second floor level. Flanking the narrower entrance bay are bays with tripartite windows, those on the upper floors in terracotta surrounds with Ionic columns, those to the first floor are pedimented. Deeply-moulded cornice parapet with cone finials; shaped buff terracotta upstands contain cartouches with date 1907 and the initials 'M.B.'. An attached red brick 4-window range to the left is more simply treated and has an attached retaining wall with cast-iron railings. A red terracotta band runs the length of the elevation between ground and first floors with the words 'Mitchells and Butlers Brewers Wine and Spirit Merchants'. Splayed corner bay has recessed entrance to main bar, windows in floors above framed in splayed buff terracotta surrounds with Ionic columns. Over the parapet on corner a weathervane in the fom of a galleon. Return elevation to Waterloo Road in the same style. INTERIOR. Bar has entrances through varnished timber vestibules with etched glass panels. Fixed upholstered bench seating, varnished and painted bar counter with pilasters and festoons. Ornate pedimented bar back with mirrors with coloured glass below and stained glass panels above. 3 walls are tiled throughout with green glazed tiles, with a frieze of medallions with husk drops in pink and green. The ceiling is covered with plain and embossed cream glazed tiles. Terrazzo floor. The Shireland Road entrance leads to a hall with glazed tiles as before, thence to parlour and billiard room with altered doors and interiors. Stairs lead up to landing with a pedimented wooden kiosk with roller shutters and etched glass, and said to have been used by a night watchman. Wall tiled as before, and doors leading off with the words 'Club Room', 'Private' etc. Steps down from ground floor lobby lead to a basement grill room with coffered ceiling. Walls and ceiling decorated with tiles by Carters of Poole. Lower part of the walls with green tiles, some embossed with designs of birds and dolphins. Bold multi-coloured frieze with designs of galleons and cartouches. Ceiling of buff and green tiles. At the entrance a 2-bay screen with stained glass panels of galleons; behind this upholstered seat with bell-push. Ornate bar counter and back with dumb waiter. Original tiled and cast-iron grill on the opposite wall. Terrazzo floor. Tiled toilet with original urinals by Twyfords of Hanley. An exceptionally fine and near- complete example of an Edwardian showpiece public house and commercial hotel which retains its original plan-form and many interior features, including the unusually ornate and complete basement grill room.
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Other Photos
Basement grill room, 1997	Picture source: Michael Croxford