Leicestershire is known for being a beautiful county (and the home of savoury foods and brilliant cheese!), and bordering our very own Nottinghamshire it’s not surprising that it’s one of the first counties we were able to completely tick off. Five of the county’s Wetherspoons are in or around Leicester, with the remaining five located in Melton Mowbray, Loughborough, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Coalville and Market Harborough.

The Kettleby Cross – LE13 0UJ

Click here to read our full review of The Kettleby Cross.

The first Leicestershire pub we paid a visit to was The Kettleby Cross in Melton Mowbray. This pub is a relatively modern Wetherspoon, built back in 2007 as the company’s flagship ‘eco-pub’, designed to generate its own electricity and minimise energy usage through clever technology and rainwater harvesting. It was half-destroyed by a mysterious 2010 fire, but quickly refurbished and re-opened.

Inside the pub is well laid-out, with plenty of natural light from the large front windows with a warm, traditional colour theme throughout. A long bar stretches to the back of the pub and bookshelves separate the raised seating areas – a cosy fireplace tucked away at the back of the pub continues the warm, welcoming feel.

The toilets are hidden away upstairs, but are wonderful with dark wood and stone tiles giving them an elegant feel. As is often the case, the women’s were even more luxurious, with gold-framed mirrors and a vanity area earning them a 5.0.

Overall score: 3.92/5

The Shoulder of Mutton – LE65 1AF

Click here to read our full review of The Shoulder of Mutton.

A week or so later we headed to Ashby-de-la-Zouch and to The Shoulder of Mutton, a conglomerate of buildings joined together over the course of three centuries. To the rear is a huge, welcoming beer garden with glass-fronted barn-like extensions, while the front retains its somewhat unassuming charm dating back to the 18th century,

The interior embraces its varied history, with the rear offering a modern, almost gastropub feeling, while the hidden nooks and seating areas feel traditional and historic. It feels like a pub with something for everyone, with a huge skylight illuminating the bar area to contrast with the cosier front seating areas of the pub.

The toilets are upstairs, but quite uniquely split across two floors; the men’s is on the first floor and the women’s on the second. They’re quite pleasantly decorated in a traditional fashion, but even more uniquely the men’s toilets were actually split into two separate rooms; one for cubicles and one for urinals. That’s a first for us!

Overall score: 4.50/5

The Lord Keeper of the Great Seal – LE2 5BF

Click here to read our full review of The Lord Keeper of the Great Seal.

A trip to Leicester gave us the opportunity to tick off a few more pubs, the first being The Lord Keeper of the Great Seal in Oadby, on the outskirts of Leicester. The pub is named after a ceremonial position dating back to the 16th century, and the pub inhabits a rather interesting building which, if we’re being honest, looks a little bit like an Iceland.

The interior takes in a lot of natural light from the glass windows at the front of the pub, and it stretches around to a sunken seating area to the right. The front windows appear to open fully which presumably makes this a rather lovely pub to enjoy in the (rare) hot days of the British summer.

The toilets let the pub down unfortunately, with a very dated design and a generic, uninteresting feel to them – a far cry from the sometimes extravagant toilets we like to see in a Spoons.

Overall score: 2.83/5

The William Wygston – LE18 1DR

Click here to read our full review of The William Wygston.

The William Wygston in Wigston was our next stop, a pub named after an incredibly rich 16th century wool merchant who donated a lot of money towards opening schools and hospitals in the local area, earning himself a statue on Leicester’s clock tower, a town named after him and ultimately a Wetherspoon dedicated to him.

The pub was built in the late 90s to house a Kwik Save, and from the outside it’s been transformed into a warm, welcoming looking boozer with hanging baskets and flower beds adorning the frontage.

Inside, the pub is well themed. It stretches quite far back into the building, with a couple of raised seating areas, and the walls are adorned with small tapestries paying homage to the pub’s namesake.

Stained glass windows separate cosy booths, but most interesting is the myriad sculptures throughout the pub, from the huge and impressive metal dragon sculpture guarding the stairs to the toilet, to the intriguing statuettes lining the staircase.

The toilets were another example of the chain’s standard design, pleasant but simple with grey tiling, dark faux-marble around the basins, and the wood-look flooring.

Overall score: 2.58/5

The Corn Exchange – LE1 5GG

Click here to read our full review of The Corn Exchange.

Our first stop in Leicester city centre was The Corn Exchange, a grand 19th-century building situated beside the city’s famous 800 year old market – the largest outdoor market in Europe, in case you were wondering. When we visited the impressive archway at the front was undergoing refurbishment works, leaving it fenced off and meaning the only outside seating area was to the side.

Inside the pub is large and its open plan layout offers plenty of seating, with a ground floor wrapped around the central bar and an upstairs mezzanine area, which was unfortunately closed when we arrived on a quiet day. The pub feels reasonably fresh following its £719,000 refurbishment in 2022, although the colour theme felt overwhelmingly brown in our opinion. The carpet, however, was a wonderful feature, encompassing the cinquefoil of Leicestershire and incorporating a corn motif in keeping with the building’s history.

The toilets had similarly benefitted from the refurbishment, with a wonderfully sleek and modern grey design. They were located downstairs, rather uncommon for a Spoons.

Overall score: 4.0/5

The High Cross – LE1 4JB

Click here to read our full review of The High Cross.

Up next, just a short walk away, was The High Cross. The High Cross is an important part of Leicester’s history, built originally as a structure to provide shelter for market traders in the 16th century, with only a single pillar still standing. That pillar now stands just across the road from this Wetherspoon, with a granite slab in the road outside marking the centre of medieval Leicester.

This history is proudly embraced in Leicester; not only does this Wetherspoon pub, located on Highcross Street, pay homage to it with its name, but the city’s Highcross Shopping Centre also makes reference to the history.

The High Cross is a very traditional, and rather beautiful, pub from the outside. It’s a Grade II Listed building, which opened at the end of the 19th century as the High Cross Coffee House, embracing the country’s growing teetotal movement.

Inside the pub’s traditional feel continues, with a lot of dark wood and quite an open bar area. The seating area wraps around the bar, where the secondary seating area is wonderfully well-lit by a wall of glass looking out onto the beer garden.

The beer garden is perhaps the pub’s best feature; a hidden gem tucked away round the side of the pub, nestled between the buildings of Leicester’s historic city centre. Enclosed by tall brick walls it has a warm and inviting feeling, again embracing the traditional and historic feeling of the pub.

When we visited the pub’s toilets were being renovated; the women’s had been completed, and earned a score of 4/5, but the men’s were dated and seemingly untouched, earning just a 1.5/5.

Overall score: 3.08/5

The White House – LE7 9SE

Click here to read our full review of The White House.

Our next stop was The White House, a huge and imposing 20th century Georgian-style building located in Scraptoft. ‘House’ is of course an understatement – this is a massive mansion, built originally for the honorary secretary of Leicester Tigers rugby club. To the rear it hast three large extensions, turning it into a staggeringly large pub.

Inside the stately feel of the exterior is continued, with a huge central staircase and grand sitting rooms turned into cosy seating areas and a second bar. The extensions form a large open-plan main bar area, with ample seating and wonderful natural light from the wraparound windows.

To the side and the rear a large beer garden wraps itself around the pub, with dozens of tables offering more seating areas for summer days. On our visit we found a small village fete, fairly unorthadox for a Wetherspoon but showing that the pub plays an important part in the local community.

Unsurprisingly, the toilets were just as elegant as the rest of the pub, with dark and light marble decorating the walls and basin areas and dark wood adorning the doors and framing.

Overall score: 4.75/5

The Monkey Walk – LE67 3WD

Click here to read our full review of The Monkey Walk.

The Monkey Walk in Coalville is quite unique on our Wetherspoon-visiting journey, being the only pub (so far) that we’ve visited twice to review. In this case it turned out the photographs we took on our first visit weren’t good enough for us to post a review, so we decided to pay the pub a return visit.

The building is an interestingly-shaped building, finished in 1901 and located centrally in Coalville’s Marlborough Square.

On our first visit the pub was painted a rather disgusting shade of yellow, with splashes of red, blue and brown spread throughout the pub. Our return was fortunate, as the pub had been redecorated in the months between our visits to offer a much less offensive and more modern shade of grey throughout.

Inside it’s a rather small pub, L-shaped with cosy seating areas off to the side. To the rear is one of the smallest beer gardens we’ve ever encountered however, primarily designed as somewhere for customers to smoke without standing on the main road.

The toilets are fairly modern and well-decorated, nothing special but an example of the chain’s standard design theme with a dark marble sink area, grey tiles and harmless wood-look flooring.

Overall score: 2.33/5

The Amber Rooms – LE11 5BE

Click here to read our full review of The Amber Rooms.

A visit to Loughborough in December brought us to The Amber Rooms. A year or so prior (before Wetho Wanderers existed!) when we visited Loughborough to watch a friendly match between Forest and Stoke at Loughborough University there were two Wetherspoons in the town centre – unfortunately the second one closed its doors in September leaving only this one.

This pub is fairly modern, with a somewhat industrial feel coming from the metal-clad frontage and the large overhanging metal roof. Whilst the contemporary look is somewhat out of character for the JDW chain, in this town where the student population is high the aesthetic works, especially in what is techically a Lloyds No. 1 Bar.

Inside the pub is quite large, spread across a large open-plan downstairs and a smaller upstairs mezzanine which wraps around the second floor. Tables are packed in, again catering to the local clientele, though there is a raised seating area to the rear which feels much quieter and cozier.

To the rear is a small but very welcoming and secluded beer garden, surrounded by plants and half-covered by a walkway leading to the nearby The Rushes shopping centre.

The toilets continue the metal theming of the exterior, with metal separators and basins paired with grey wall and floor tiles for a neutral but classy look. There was a slight disparity in our toilet scoring however, as the women’s toilets were much less modern, instead looking reminiscent of a horror film hotel with a thin old corridor of ominous cubicle doors.

Overall score: 2.50/5

The Sugar Loaf – LE16 7NJ

Click here to read our full review of The Sugar Loaf

We ticked off our final Leicestershire Wetherspoon quite a while after the first one, finally making a trip to Market Harborough in January 2024. The Sugar Loaf is a wonderful building with quite a history behind it; from the street you see the pub, which was once Thomas Goward’s grocery shop, and above it two floors of accommodation where he and his household lived. Hidden to the rear is a long warehouse where his produce was prepared, converted now to into part of the deep interior of the pub.

Inside the pub stretches deep into the old warehouse, embracing the industrial trusses and skylights of the old structure to form a long, thin interior where the elegant dark wood bar is the main feature. Seating is plentiful throughout, with enclosed booths off to the side and even the shopkeeper’s large chair taking centre stage at the front of the pub. To the rear is a beer garden, hidden by the old streets of Market Harborough.

The toilets were downstairs, again an example of Wetherspoon’s simple design of a dark faux-marble basin area and simple white tiles.

Overall score: 2.58/5

Leicestershire turned out to be an impressive county for Wetherspoons; not only can it boast the best pub we visited in 2023 (The White House, which earned itself an impressive 4.75/5) but three of its ten Spoons earned themselves scores over 4. The Shoulder of Mutton in Ashby-de-la-Zouch was the joint-fourth best pub we visited last year with a score of 4.50/5, and The Coin Exchange the joint-ninth with a score of 4.00/5.

Similarly impressive is the variety of pubs, from The High Cross, which inhabits a building originally built in the temperance movement, to The Kettleby Cross, a pub built just over a decade-and-a-half ago in 2007.

Leicestershire average score: 3.31/5