Peter Boat Inn

What a lovely pub! There seem to be more pubs than houses in Old Leigh so it was tough to choose one (we didn’t have time to try them all sadly!). It was a cold but sunny afternoon and The Peter Boat has a large beer garden overlooking the sea. Once inside the pub ordering drinks, we realised how warm and cosy it was in there and how cold it was outside. We decided to sit in but by the huge windows looking onto the beer garden and the sea.
The drinks were good and very reasonably priced. The staff were friendly and there was a good beer and cider choice.
We only had one drink as it’s all we had time for but we were given pretzel sticks and a plate of canapes — little French bread pieces with brie and cranberry, chicken and sweet chilli and sausage and BBQ sauce. Delicious little surprises!
If we’d had more time we would have stayed longer and had dinner there too. The food looked good and well priced.
I also thought whilst we were there that if you wanted a wedding reception in a pub, this would be a lovely one! I don’t know if they’ve ever done it or would consider but it’s nicely decorated, the large windows look like they open up onto the beer garden over looking the sea and it’s a decent size.

Very busy as its a bank holiday but im telling you I have never eaten fish and chips as good as this, no grease fish was light and crispy and chips were crunchy and fresh so so nice I couldn’t recommend enough

Good food a bit more expensive than it used to be still pretty good. Still one of the best places to go on a hot day.

This place gets really packed at weekends. Trying to get a drink is a nightmare, when it first changed hands there were plenty of staff now its not so good! specials board is ok but not great, you cant even get just a sandwich!!! you have to order a meal which is ok when its warm (the meal that is), chips are frozen type and tend to go soggy after 10mins. when they had a barby one Sunday that was ok. Dont think i would take freinds here.

Nice beer garden but thats it. The food is well below average and very overpriced for what you get (cheap fish and chips mostly with a limp lifeless salad). They can’t even be bothered to bring the food to your table, you have to wait to be called, then navigate through the maze of tables to the bar and then navigate your way back carry 4 plates of food! Probably a good place for locals as they don’t know any better, but anyone with any kind of ‘food standards’ stear clear.

The Peter Boat has fond memories for me as it’s so many pubs in one location. It’s brilliant if the sun’s out and you want to get lazy drunk by the water waiting for the tide to come in. It’s the place to be when Leigh has a festival on as you can sit and drink watching the world go by in all it’s glory. Finally I’d recommend popping down there on a dark wintry rainy night as it’s atmosphere changes completely. You feel exposed to the elements in the car park but once inside you don’t want to leave.
The recent and much needed refurbishment has given it a new lease of life.
The only downside was last week we were refused breakfast at 11am after the Leigh 10K run as they claimed it was too late. Shame the sign outside said it was until 11:30am.
All in all worth a visit…

Imagine, if you will, a quaint oldey-​worldey fishing village down towards the mouth of the River Thames that once upon a time witnessed the might of the Roman army steering its way upriver to sack the city of Londinium…
This is Leigh-​on-​Sea, or Old Leigh as it’s known to the locals. The bit of Leigh that hasn’t been turned into a posers paradise of Café/​Bars, ladies who lunch and illegally parked expensive cars with equally expensive vanity plates.
Old Leigh is just that — old. It’s been around, catching and serving up seafood for hundreds of years in small cockle sheds. Naturally, this has gone hand in hand with a number of fine (and equally old) pubs that have been catering for the seafaring man’s thirst for an equally long time.
So to the Peter Boat. In it’s current incarnation it’s one of the newer pubs in Old Leigh and caters for two distinct crowds: older regulars (most of the year) and younger drinkers (anytime the sun vaguely hoves into view from May to September and over Christmas).
The pub itself is certainly nothing special — standard booze, standard food and manages to wangle a price increase seemingly based on the temperature. Service is always incredibly slow when the bar is busy (any of those sunny days) and the staff in summer are the nearest bunch of students prepared to work for minimum wage regardless of experience or ability. Winter is a completely different kettle of fish however, but it’s not really winter that makes the Peter Boat worth a train trip from London.
On hot days this pub comes… alive…
It generates huge crowds in nothing better than a car park full of picnic tables with a portakabin flogging seafood in the corner. Along one side is the sea wall and the fishing boats overlooking the estuary channel (muddy sea bed, view of the tide coming in and out and Kent far away on a clear day).
What makes it special is the sheer randomness, eccentricity and mixture of people who converge to drink in the sun. It’s truly a melting pot of Essex humanity — and I actually defy anyone to go there without running into at least one person they know.
Old Leigh is one of my favourite places in my hometown — and there aren’t many! I don’t go there enough and I’m vocally critical of the state of the whole Southend area. It’s places like the Peter Boat and those who still go there year after year that remind me why I loved it when I was growing up.
If you do venture in that direction you owe yourself a visit… and don’t be put off by the Hells Angels, Essex boys and girls or seafood munching pensioners who you’re bound to meet.
It’s never really a place, decorations, music or products that make pubs or bars special — it’s the people. So go meet them; all the characters with their stories and all the long, sunny days of summer to tell them…

A gem in old leigh, the peter boat has been loved by generations but mainly in the summer! The outside area is a great place to soak up the old town and meet up with large groups of friends. It can get a bit rowdy later in the day but it’s all part of the fun. For food you can either order from the restaurant which is pretty basic or nip to the cockle sheds next door for fresh seafood.

in the winter this is the same as every other pub in the area, but in the summer it comes alive. the crowds mingle in together from the other pubs on the large court yard outside enjoying the sun with a very friendly atmosphere. it suffers as any busy pub does with long waiting times at the bar but a very social enjoyable place on a warm summers day

An ok pub in Old Leigh. This pub comes into its own in Summer when it has huge numbers of picnic tables outside. Drinking out there can give the impression that you are sitting by the sea — in really it is more often the mud-​flats. During Summer there is a real buzz and it can be a great place to grab a beer and watch the sunset. However there is often a long queue and the toilets are grim. Out of season there are a couple of fires indoors which entice you in, however the food is awful particularly the children’s menu which is so clearly microwaved and not very pleasant.

a nice pub by the sea edge, which provides great outdoor views and opportunities to socialise making it the perfect plave to drink in the summer months.
inside the pub could be a bit better laid out, as it gets quite hard to get around when busy.
staff are friendly and professional, serving customers quite quickly too.
a good selection of drinks and nice food, sometimes a bit pricey though for what you get.

This is a nice enough pub with a great outdoor terrace which is the main reason for going (when the sun’s out.) Same kind of beer as everywhere, interior nothing special, but when the sun’s shining it’s great. Wonderful views over the Thames and the sea. Buy some cockles and prawns and eat them here, it’s great.

Always an okay place to grab a drink at the Folk Festival or the Art Trail. Service usually good, toilets (ladies) usually awful, but perhaps that’s because I only tend to visit when it’s busy.
Nice beer garden and it doesn’t smell too fishy!
Haven’t eaten here for years but the food was always pretty average.

Old Leigh never fails in providing pubs that provide atmosphere both outside and inside, but to me mainly outside. This small, and I mean small fishing port that specialises in shellfish cockles, whelks etc. This community dates right back and has a rich defined lineage, a name that jumps out regularly is Osborne an original fishmongers that exist within the Peter Boat car park and supplement those seeking beer with allsorts of seafood, in some cases when intoxicated being the only time you would eat some of the creatures on offer. The pub itself is fine and provides a full menu, but its beauty lies outside in my view, midst a sunset, or a warm summer’s evening with friends. or joining in the celebrations of Leigh Folk Festival, something the Guardian recently called ‘the one festival to be visited this year’. Enjoy the Peter Boat, and a similar description will be provided for the other Old Leigh pubs, who no doubt are in competition but invariably compliment each other really well. When visiting Southend and you ask where to go, always within the top three suggestions will be Old Leigh; try walking it from Chalkwell along the Cinder Path, or take the train, Leigh station is just over the road. In fact anyone taking the C2C line from Fenchurch Street into Southend will catch a brief glimpse of Old Leigh and the pubs on the right hand side towards the water.

This is a great pub for sunny summer days and evenings, thanks to the huge patio area on the seafront. Sorry, estuary front.
It’s in Old Leigh which is a quaint little fishing village and well worth a stroll through.
It gets busy during the week with day-​trippers and local workers and busy at the weekend with everyone else. Last time we visited, we placed our food order at the bar only to be told that it would be at least 1 hour. This was said very matter of factly and the implication was that if we didn’t like it we could go somewhere else. I guess they didn’t have to care too much about losing 2 customer for lunch when there were another 20 or so lined up behind us.
Maybe have your food somewhere else and visit The Peter Boat for a drink only.