‘Flying the flag for the area’
A popular YouTuber visited 24 Oldham and Royton pubs in less than 24 hours(Image: The Great British Pub Crawl)
A former landlord turned YouTuber has shared his verdict on Oldham‘s boozers after spending a day visiting 24 pubs.
Dale Harvey – known for his video channel The Great British Pub Crawl – has been on a mission to have a drink in every pub in the country since 2022. Based in Nottingham, Dale says he has visited more than 5,000 pubs so far.
Last week, he spent a day in Oldham and he was able to tick off 24 venues. He said impressed with the variety on offer, heaping praise on three pubs in particular.
Marking his first time in the Greater Manchester borough, Dale told his 20,000-plus subscribers he ‘found some really, really good boozers’ and that it was ‘worth the trip’.
“I think when it comes to pubs, I’ve pretty much completed Oldham now,” Dale told the Manchester Evening News of the visit. “I’ve visited Manchester a few times, and had visited the day before, and just thought ‘well, every town needs a visit at some point so why not now?’
Dale visited Oldham for the first time as part of the pub crawl(Image: The Great British Pub Crawl)
Before his trip, as is now customary with all of his visits, Dale asked followers for recommendations of pubs to visit before coming up with an itinerary and a route.
For his visit to Oldham, he started with The Tommyfield Inn, by Tommyfield Market. Praising its ‘rustic charm’, Dale said he was impressed with its drinks offer and said it was a ‘very pleasant start to [his] day’.
He then made his way to the Town Hall Tavern, the Old Bank, The Railway Hotel, the Egyptian Room, The Trapdoor and the Bees Knees, where he sampled a half pint in each.
“The idea is to do every pub so I will never walk past anything,” Dale said. “I will go in, no matter what. I think every pub is worth a visit and they all need to be in terms of my mission.”
Town Hall Tavern was amongst those visited in the day-long crawl(Image: Google Maps)
Dale said he had three firm favourites in Oldham. First off, he named the Fox & Pine, on Greaves Street, which has won a number of awards over the years. They were also a big help in bringing Dale to the area, having sponsored his visit.
Earlier this year, the community-led pub received three top prizes from CAMRA, including being named the Rochdale, Oldham and Bury CAMRA Pub of the Year for 2025. Based in a converted terrace house, the pub has become known for its good drinks selection as much as it has for its quirky aesthetic and unique memorabilia covering the walls.
“It’s full of character,” Dale added. “It’s just an absolutely amazing pub. They have 10 cask ale lines on, which is something you don’t often really find anymore these days. They’re just really flying the flag for the area and keeping cask ales alive, which is a big heritage thing in British culture.
“They’re lovely people, and they’re doing such a wonderful job. And it’s great to see just how busy they are – you often hear the other side of the coin from pubs when it comes to not getting enough people in.”
Dale with the team at Fox & Pine(Image: The Great British Pub Crawl)
Dale also gave a recommendation to the Ashton Arms, on Clegg Street, which has been described by CAMRA as a ‘traditional, well-run town centre’ venue, which has an ‘excellent’ beer range. “It’s another wonderful cask ale pub,” Dale said. “It’s just an absolute gem of a place.”
And his third suggestion came in the form of the Molino Lounge on Yorkshire Street by the Town Hall. Housed in a former police station, the venue retains a lot of its original charm.
“I never really praise chain pubs, but they’ve done a really good job of building something with a load of the old police station features,” Dale said. “The old entrance and the concrete that still says police on it remain there, and it’s really quite unique.
“It’s quite a good idea to have kept something and not just knocked it down. It was nice to see what they’d done with it, it set it apart from the other Lounges I’ve been too which tend to look very similar to one another. It was a really nice find.”
Asked what he discovered about the area during his first-time visit, Dale said he was positively surprised at Royton. “Royton seemed to be thriving,” he added. “There’s 18 or so pubs there and I only got through 12 of them, but they seem to be really attracting a nice mix of crowds.
Dale said he was left impressed with the variety of pubs and the lovely community in Oldham(Image: The Great British Pub Crawl)
“There were trendy cocktail bars and they are just trying to move with the times. I feel like Oldham is perhaps slightly slipping and losing stuff. Oldham apparently used to have over 300 pubs in the town centre, and now I think there’s just 12 – and that’s really sad.
“I feel for Oldham because there’s some really lovely people and places there. It’s a really nice, little town but they’ve just lost so many of their pubs. They really can’t afford to lose any more.
“On a whole, the hospitality industry is just in such a critical time right now. Pubs pay 20 per cent of VAT and they are struggling. I’ve been very vocal that the government needs to do more, but this is something that has been happening for over 30 years now. We’re at a really critical stage.”
Having been in the industry in various capacities over the years, Dale says he has seen how massively pubs have had to change and adapt in recent years to survive. But he says there’s one thing that hasn’t changed.
“Pub culture is such a big part of being British,” he says. “There’s no other nation in the world like it when it comes to pubs – it’s something our heritage is built on and it’s now engrained in us.
Dale was left impressed with the charm of the Molino Lounge, which is based within a former police station on Yorkshire Street(Image: The Great British Pub Crawl)
“I remember I once spoke to an 80-year-old called Dennis in the West Midlands, and he told me about how the pub was his life. He said visiting his local, which was about 100 yards from his house, was the only social interaction he ever had all week. And it couldn’t afford to open on Monday or Tuesdays, so there were times where he could go three days without speaking to anyone.
“And that’s not a unique story about this one chap in the Black Country. There are little communities that are losing their pubs left, right and centre. It’s a real thing, there is still such a big social aspect behind pubs and I think that’s what the government could do with being reminded of sometimes.”
Whilst Dale still has another trip to Royton to plan for the future to tick off the remaining venues he was unable to visit this time round, he’s got plans within the next month to return to Manchester and to also give Rochdale a visit.
“I’m so grateful that I’m able to turn my passion into something I can do on a full-time basis,” Dale says of his video channel. “It’s great to visit these communities across the country and see what people are doing. And I hope it helps spread the word that there are some amazing places to be found just around the corner that are worth supporting.”
You can follow The Great British Pub Crawl on Facebook and YouTube. The ‘mega pub crawl’ around Oldham and Royton can be watched here.