The Jack Phillips

The Jack Phillips sits on Godalming High Street, in the middle of the town rather than on its edges, and it is a Wetherspoons, which tells you a good deal before you get through the door. It is a bar first, with pub food alongside, and it trades at the cheap end of the market.

The £ price band here is not a hedge. Wetherspoons pricing is the reason most people choose one, and this is the option in Godalming for a round that doesn't need thinking about. If you are weighing up where to take a group with mixed budgets, that matters more than any amount of description. Nobody has to check the menu prices before agreeing to come.

The name is the other thing worth knowing. Jack Phillips was the wireless operator on the Titanic and came from Godalming, and the pub carries local history through its interior. Wetherspoons does this in all its sites, but it lands harder when the subject is genuinely local rather than a loose civic connection. If you have visitors and you want somewhere central that gives them a bit of the town's story with a pint, this does that job without ceremony.

It suits the ordinary occasions. A weekday lunch when you want to be fed and out again. A first drink before moving on somewhere else. A group meeting in the middle of town where the High Street location does the work of being easy to find. It is spacious, which helps if there are more than four of you, and it is not the place for a quiet anniversary dinner.

Before you go: Wetherspoons pubs generally work on ordering at the bar or through the chain's app rather than table service, and bookings are not usually part of how they operate, worth ringing ahead if you are bringing a large group. Opening times and what is available vary by site and by day, so check the pub directly rather than assuming. The menu is a chain menu and changes with the chain, not with the season.

Godalming has plenty of places to eat and drink along and around the High Street, at various prices. The Jack Phillips is the reliable, cheap, central one, the pub you go to when the deciding factor is cost or convenience, and the local history is a bonus rather than the reason.