Stageside Bar

A small service bar at the Terminus Hotel sits along the back wall of a side room, off the main public bar. The counter is timber, scratched and dust-coated, with a brass beer-tap line running along the front edge of the bar top. Two upturned glasses sit on the counter near the till. Behind the bar, a low timber shelf carries a row of empty bottles in a uniform line. A doorway at one end of the room opens to what was once a stage area, the platform timber-framed and now bare. The wall behind the stage is plastered, painted in the same institutional cream that runs through the upstairs rooms. The light comes from a single window high on the side wall.

The Terminus ran live music in some of its later working years, and the stage was the focus of the side room when the pub was busiest. The smaller bar served the room directly, taking pressure off the main public bar during stage nights. The visible building is the 1917 Tooth and Co. demolition and rebuild. The pub closed in 1983 and the stage stopped being used. The 2018 restoration kept the side room in service but reworked the bar layout for the modern operation. The photograph is from 2016, before the work began.