The Top 12 Cocktail Bars Near The Woolpack Inn

A cocktail bar on the 52nd floor of the Shard, Gŏng has the views you'd expect and, rarer than it sounds at this altitude, cocktails that could hold their own at ground level too. The name comes from "dougong," the interlocking wooden brackets of traditional Chinese architecture, which you can spot supporting the shelves behind the bar. Shangri-La service, an infinity pool next door, and a horizon that covers most of southern England.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

Tucked into Lilliput Court, this cocktail bar occupies a building that locals will tell you was bricked up and forgotten for years, historically used by thieves and smugglers who found Bath's Georgian law enforcement inconvenient. The outlaw theme runs through the menu, with cocktails named for famous criminals. An extensive whisky selection sits alongside, for when you'd rather just drink like a reprobate without the narrative. Ranked 13th on Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #13 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars

Graffiti-style caricatures mark the black exterior on Cheltenham Road, and inside, moody lighting and leather stools across two rooms make this cocktail bar feel like a neighbourhood spot that takes its drinks more seriously than its name suggests. The menu leans into an Asian-inflected playfulness, with the Scotch and Champagne, a Chinese classic dressed up with single malt and Moët, a good place to start. It placed 29th on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 list.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #29 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars

Four floors of a handsome old Bristol building given over entirely to cocktails, which feels like the right call. The Milk Thistle is a cocktail bar spread across a hidden vault, a lounge, and an attic, with the kind of eclectic decor that earns the word without apology. Drinks lean classic with house riffs woven in, and the team tends toward recommendations rather than leaving you to flounder. It ranks in the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
3. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #41 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

A graffiti-scrawled doorway, a seedy pay phone, a luminous red light, and then you're in. The neon sex sign above the stairs does a good job setting expectations that the bar itself immediately subverts: downstairs is calm, clean, and quietly serious about cocktails. It's a speakeasy in the Bristol tradition of making you work a little before rewarding you, and the theatrical entry is genuinely half the fun.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

Loose Cannon is a cocktail bar on Bristol's harbourside where local artists rotate work on the walls and the menu reads like a fever dream, pop-culture riffs on everything from Donkey Kong to Brexit. The drinks are inventive and aggressively garnished, the kind of place where your cocktail arrives wearing something. Students fill it most nights, and the energy leans young and loud in the best harbourside-dive-bar way.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

A cocktail bar spread across three retro-styled levels in Jericho, Raoul's crams Oxford's largest spirits selection into alcoves behind a surprisingly small bar. Rum is the obsession, including a house blend aged in a Madeira cask, though bourbon runs a close second. The fruit-forward cocktails go through more produce than most grocers shift in a week, and the room has the easy, happy hum of a place that's been doing this for a long time.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The name sounds like a pub, but the Duke of Cambridge is a cocktail bar, and a proudly self-proclaimed long-standing one at that. A long wooden bar runs one wall, circular booths line the other, and the wide-open floor between them exists for a reason: this place fills up. Happy hour runs four nights a week for four hours, which tells you more about the vibe than any descriptor could.

1. Difford's Guide 2.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The oval wooden bar at the center of the room is what orients you first, then the checkerboard tiles, the palms, the terracotta pots, and the tea lights doing their gentle work. This Cowley Road bar runs coffee by day and cocktails by night, with around fifteen classics plus house originals on the menu. The crowd skews local and unhurried, the kind who know the difference between an aperitif and a digestif and order both.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The cocktail bar at Malmaison Oxford is set inside a former Victorian prison, and the original cell bars are still on the windows. The main bar sits on the third floor in what used to be the visitors room, high-ceilinged and dressed in the plush fabrics and dark furniture the Malmaison group does reliably well. It's the kind of place where the surroundings do most of the talking, which is fine, because the surroundings are a jail.

1. Difford's Guide 2 stars · Difford's Guide