Last visited: May 2026

Forget London’s glittering West End — the star of this south western end of Nailsea is a scruffy, glorious, time-warped pub.

From the outside, as you can see, it barely looks like a pub at all.

It looks like an old farmhouse that time quietly forgot — no hanging baskets groomed to within an inch of their lives, no glow of a flatscreen through the window.

This is what a rural pub looked like when they started handing out licenses, in the days before breweries owned them and someone decided they needed a brand. The Blue Flame never got the memo, and thank god it never will.

Inside, CAMRA has listed the Blue Flame as a pub interior of special national historic interest. Reviewers have called it “one of the last remaining authentic British pubs in existence” and “a rare gem — the absolute opposite of a corporate pubco.”

The original bar is a tiny room off the corridor, with faded nicotine walls and a roomful of lively conversation - rough seas to the Lundy when I visited — the kind of atmosphere no interior designer could manufacture in a thousand years of trying.

In summer the garden comes alive with pizza, barbecues and outdoor music. In winter the conversation fills the small rooms just as warmly.

Superb beer and cider served straight from the barrel — the way it always should have been done. The gents, for those who need to know, are in an outside privy.

Here’s the thing about the Blue Flame: plenty of people will have driven past it on the quiet back lane around Nailsea, glanced over, and carried on. Maybe because it's a pub that other people - not you - go to.

But rural pubs don’t work like that anymore. They need our custom — not one day, but this day. So when you arrive after your walk, don’t hesitate, try the door. Go in. Order something. Stay a while. 

Because if enough people do the opposite, one day you’ll drive past and it’ll have given way to the latest housing development on this side of Nailsea.

And you’ll remember that time you nearly went in to The Blue Flame Inn once.