11 February 2026

Beer and sandwiches: At the Angel Inn in Durham

This column is our weekly pub review, written by pintsmen, women and children across the nation. Suggestions to letters@newstatesman.co.uk

By New Statesman

Illustration by Marta Signori

Durham’s Angel Inn is by its own description “where the cool c**ts go” and once you have scaled the savage hill of Crossgate and muscled through the impossibly heavy black door, you are in no fit state to argue otherwise.

The first sight that greets you inside is a wall of mugshot Polaroids of the regulars, holding whiteboards scrawled with such indictments as “fat bastard”, “professional pegger” and “I fuck dogs”. The second sight that greets you is those same regulars staring at you from the bar. The walls are blood red save for one by the pool table which is decorated with the newspaper pages of legendary punk history. Above the urinal are instructions for flushing away borderline personality medication.

From the bar

Your standard draught beers are available, together with a lot of Jägermeister. While you wait you can line up a song on the touch-screen jukebox, but heed the sign above: “No chart or dance SHIT!”

But the Angel’s joy is its contrast. On the broad terrace outside the noise subsides and resolves itself into a damp, quiet tranquillity as you watch the chimneys and roofs of Durham. The evening deepens, the sky darkens, and each passing train on the old Victorian viaduct looks a still more blazing star, invites a still more hopeful wish.

On the terrace

A tribe of bikers may establish a barbecue on the terrace. Wait to be offered; don’t snatch.

Once the night is suitably tender, swan down to Framwellgate Bridge for a view of Durham Cathedral above the river, which Harold Evans, once the editor of the Northern Echo, described as, “The most dramatic and exciting architectural site in the world.” Murmur, as did Walter Scott, the words scratched by your feet: “O grey towers of Durham!/Yet well I love thy mixed and massive piles!”

Angel Inn, Durham