Sounds like I'm probably too late for this, but just as a comment :
What is typical for this style?
The house yeast.
In Wyeast terms, Fulller's would only ever use 1968, whereas Tim Taylor couldn't conceive of using anything other than 1469. It's all about beer as an expression of identity, rather than looking up someone else's (often wrong) idea of what it "should" taste like. Particularly with that kind of basic "cooking" beer. Sure, 1968 and 1469 will produce different beers, but that's kind of the point. Arguably at a homebrew level, the house yeast of British homebrewers is Nottingham, it's also widely used commercially here and dry yeast fits the unpretentious nature of these beers.
Play around - out of date liquid yeasts work quite well for 1 gallon batches, and allow you to try different yeasts - I'm in the middle of doing similar experiments myself. One I've got my eye on is WLP022 Essex, which is meant to be a more characterful cousin of 1968/002. You don't say where you are but if eg you're on the US West Coast, then WLP076 "New Albion" or WLP041 "Redhook" are British yeasts that have made it over there; if you're further east then the Yeast Bay's Midwestern Ale (supposedly Bell's) and WLP008 "Sam Adam's" have less British character but are still closer to your terroir.
If you're wanting something a bit more left-field then WLP540/1762 "Rochefort" appears to be a British yeast that somehow ended up in a Belgian monastery. It's unrelated to other Belgians and unlike them is POF- but still gives bags of esters.
Don't feel too constrained with the hops, either - this is something of a ragbag style, it's not like eg pilsner where everything is tightly proscribed. Arguably the classic combination is some late Goldings and then a generous slug of Cascade at flameout/whirlpool and/or in the fermenter, but traditionally you also saw a fair bit of Fuggles, Saaz and Styrians.
These days the style seems to be splitting in two, reflecting the ordinary vs best distinction in brown bitter. The cheap ones are 3.8% ABV with standard 2-row pale malt, and a fair amount of cheap hops like Junga from Poland (which can still work really quite well). The fancier ones are 4-4.5% perhaps with some premium malt like Otter or Golden Promise and showing off some more interesting hops like the New Zealand ones for instance. I'd tend to brew one of the latter, you've got a bit more scope to play with than the ordinary ones (which in turn means that the ordinary ones are harder to brew well). Sometimes you'll get some pilsner malt in the mix, 5-6% torrified wheat is quite common, particularly up north.
Don't attempt perfection by copying others - your beer should tell a story of who you are, however imperfect you may be.
