Form follows function, they say, and nowhere is that more true than in the pub. The function of a pub is to lift the spirits, refresh the body and send patrons back on to the streets happier, if not better, people. Creating the right form is a very serious matter. It’s a tricky business. Sometimes we all need a little homely comfort, small-scale and quiet, and the country is liberally sprinkled with delightful locals that fit just this bill, their design suiting their function as an extension of your own home, only with better drinks and someone else to tidy up.

Other moods call for more robust surroundings. For feeling as if you’re part of the big swing of things, you can’t beat a heaving city-centre pub built like a cathedral, high-ceilinged, rich with conversation and buzzing with frantic bar staff and the conviction that you have arrived.

There’s a pub for every mood. There are pubs perfectly styled for the hurt and sulky, pubs for the celebratory, some pubs that suit the newly promoted and others the freshly redundant, pubs for quiet conversation, pubs for singing in public, and no end of pubs for the pursuit of sex.

And then there are others, such as the delightful Three Pigeons in Halifax, that cater for a very specific frame of mind. Sometimes you feel the urge to do nothing more meaningful than sit back and admire what human creativity can do, without flying to Agra or New York or wandering galleries and museums until your legs give way. The decorative arts have always had a keen customer in the pub trade, and the Three Pigeons is one of the splendid Art Deco pubs, scattered around the place, that have somehow survived time and refurbishment and still cater for those who want to look at something designed nicely just for the hell of it. Yes, it’s form for form’s sake, but rules were made to be broken.

Three Pigeons, 1 Sun Fold, South Parade, Halifax, West Yorkshire. 01422 347001.

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