Pint to pint: The White Horse, Beverley, East Yorkshire The White Horse Inn, known to locals as Nellies, in the well-heeled East Yorkshire town of Beverley is perhaps the closest you'll get to time travel in any pub in Britain. Whether you enter this miraculous survivor from the street or a car park at the rear, you're faced with a labyrinth of stone-flagged corridors barely illuminated by the occasional gas mantle. With persistence, you'll find the main bar, warmed by a roaring fire and lit by a row of windows. Ancient padded benches, battered and lumpy, line the nicotine-coloured walls. On a wintry weekday lunchtime, the nine marble-topped tables were each occupied by single drinker, though conversation was communal. It is possible to spend a jolly pint or two chatting away with new friends. The sensation that you've whizzed back to 1860 is enhanced by the Dickensian murk of a spacious back room, made cosy by another fire. Sharing the room with a variety of curios - a linen-press, a cartwheel and an ancient cash register - patrons engaged in a classic pub conversation. Did you know that mahogany will sink if you drop it in water? No, you're wrong. The only wood that will sink is lignum vitae. For those seeking refuge from this flow of enlightenment, there are several snug retreats, each with its own volcanic blaze. Established as a coaching inn in 1666, the White Horse is like a mini-Gormenghast, with rooms rambling horizontally and vertically in every direction. When I first visited in the Seventies it was candlelit, and beer was dispensed from the barrel by a number of diminutive, elderly sisters (one was Nellie). All other women were barred. Acquired by the Tadcaster brewery Samuel Smith in 1976, the pub now welcomes women but otherwise has remained largely unchanged. Along with several mottled mirrors, the walls are adorned with an odd accumulation of prints: Dante and Beatrice next to Meeting of Gun Dogs Society, North Wales, 1904. A security monitor behind the bar is an unfortunate introduction and so are the lacklustre lunches. The fact that there were only four diners suggests that the clientele shares this view. Still, disappointing food may be no bad thing if it stops the White Horse becoming yet another pub/restaurant. This is very much a pub/pub. The solitary draught is Samuel Smith's Old Brewery Bitter "served from the wood." At a wallet-comforting £1.80 per pint, it draws mixed reviews from online critics. "Cheap and tastes that way," says one, though I found it pleasantly malty. There is also Samuel Smith's intriguing range of keg beers: Dark Mild, Light Mild, Sovereign Bitter and Extra Stout. The fitful, aqueous light of the gas mantles is augmented for "Candle-Lit Quiz Night" (Tuesdays 9pm).