George's Meeting House, Exeter

The new Wetherspoons pub - George's Meeting House - opened a few days ago. Was it worth the wait?

This is the old George's Meeting House, some sort of non-conformist chapel built in about 1790. Wetherspoons have spent a lot of money on it and built an extension at the back, creating more seating. There is also a new garden area, all in a cramped bit of land between here and the next chapel, next door.

I find it uncomfortable. The furniture is awful - it may look good, but unless you like sitting bolt upright for dinner then it is no good. How can you enjoy a few hours of drinking unless you sit in a relaxing sofa or armchair? Perhaps that's the intention, to create customers who only stay for a short while, enough time to eat a meal (which are more expensive here than in any of their other places).

The food is all local stuff - they make a big deal of this on the menu - and the whole place looks more like a restaurant than a pub. It has dozens of sets of small tables and chairs - all lined up symetrically - occupying the entire floor, except for a couple of leather sofas at the side. Really, it's like a cross between a posh cafeteria and a chapel - do they insist on prayers before eating?

It is a vast, cavernous former chapel with an echoing wooden floor and all of the old seating on the upstairs gallery reached through a tiny, pokey little wooden, creaky stairway. Even the old pulpit is still there. It's no smoking too.

I cannot see this place gaining any popularity at all. There is no music, no football and no smoking. Even the prices are now nearly as high as anywhere else, the main reason for going to a Wetherspoons in the first place. I don't think the White Hart Hotel, opposite, will be too bothered; it has been around for 300 years and will surely see out this place, perhaps within another three.