A casual enquiry into the pub grub in the apple of the English Hostelry.
Imagine a wide and lazy river sliding softly in the evening sun towards an ancient stone bridge. A scene contained in one of those balmy summer evenings that have a mythical quality about them when re-told as the memory of a man well past his autumn. Then, with a sense of epiphany, place besides the bridge an old and venerable inn within which a man called Norman is then the third generation of his family to be its custodian. The scene is set and all we now need is to place it in time, to label it with a year and that is 1989. That was the year I first met Norman, a quiet man who had the local granite in his dna. This was and remains a family owned pub as the web site today attests:
“Great-grandfather was William John Gibbings from Clyst St. George. He moved into the Inn in 1897, and our family has been there ever since. The current licensee is Caroline Cheffers-Heard, his Great Grand-daughter. She is the fourth generation, her daughter Riannon will be the fifth, and Amelia, born in April 2008, will be the sixth generation.”
Source: http://www.cheffers.co.uk/hist.html
What was special when I first went to The Bridge in 1978 was.... well actually, now I come to think about it almost everything about the place was special. The two solitary signs on the wall by the road, Watneys Pale Ale I remember and another I have forgotten because it was, if possible, even more bland.
“But you don't serve either of those Norman!” I challenged after several months of drinking there, the amount of time required to engage even in the most innocuous of conversation with the landlord who had see them all come and go.
“Ahhh.. we have never sold them,” said Norman and nodded sagely, “they are to discourage the unworthy.”
These late eighties were a time when the Campaign for Real Ale was bulging with the follower of fad, the moth of fashion or the bearded guru of middle class obscurity. They would take one look at those signs as they passed by and turn up their noses as they charged off in search of “the real thing”. Norman was a guardian and gatekeeper of tradition. Not the label attached to a process or the banner proclaiming a value but the old stone and wood of a country inn that had developed its own indisputable character and style.
“Would you like to see the menu?” Norman would ask as you entered the door to find him leaning on an internal stable door with a small but convenient shelf on its waist.
The menu was a white piece of card, a bit worn at the edges and gathered at the top with a large bulldog clip. This was a list of anything up to twelve different beers, written out in hand and annotated with the specific gravity for each ale. This stable door was as far as Norman and his family had really gone in terms of a public bar. Behind this door was the snug, a small room with a real fire and a bench seat around the window. Beyond the snug was a few steps down to the cellar; two rows of old wood beams on which the barrels were set and spiked.
“How long do you have to be a regular before you get invited into the snug.” I asked after a year of looking at the menu and ordering nectar.
“Oh about ten years...but you have to come in several times a week not just now and again.” Norman replied.
The layout of the pub is essentially in rooms, rooms with very basic tables, some comforts in the 'lounge' but certainly no machines of any kind. Just walls, tables, people, conversation and good beer.
“Yes, we are very happy with the layout,“ Norman said in response to a question about the pub, “we modernised in 1909.”
This reveals a proper sense of time because Norman told me that they may have to start thinking about budgeting for a refit sometime in 2030. He was an artist Norman, he knew how to play the inquisitive young customer and feed his gullible mind with pure Devonshire delight. Not that anything he said was untrue when concerned with the past but when looking to the future he knew how to stay in character.
So food, because believe it or not this is all about food. To be honest, I cannot remember what was available to eat at The Bridge twenty years ago but in my minds eye I see a Ploughmans Lunch with
a proper big slab of cheese and a decent amount of bread, fresh, wholesome unsliced bread sharing a plate with some Branston Pickle. I may be wrong about this memory but I am sure I am on the right track. If you go to the web site you will see that The Bridge has made every effort in 2009 to keep up with the Twentieth Century thanks to the work of Norman's daughter.
Evening meals reach The Bridge!
Chunk pork pie served cold with homemade coleslaw and English mustard.
The perfect accompaniment for a pint, served lunchtimes and 6-8.30pm only, my dear...
source: http://www.cheffers.co.uk/bridge.html
Such generosity of spirit, to see that not only have evening meals reached The Bridge but that they have made it to lunchtime also! But then food has been at the heart of our inns for centuries, good food, hearty food, home cooked food. As traditional as The Bridge, food was always part of the inn experience so what exactly went wrong, when and why? If we think of the pub today we think of drinking, drinking, drinking or we think gastro pub or we think Weatherspoons or we have nightmares about toasted baggettes and micro waved burgers. What I would suggest, is that we do not immediately think of home cooked food when we hear the words “Let's go down the pub!”.
“Here we had an excellent meal in a delightfully cool old fashioned room, our fare cold roast beef and freshly gathered salad, with cheese to follow, washed down by good old English ale, clear and sparkling, a repast fit for a king; at least had I been king then, I could not have wished for better cheer.” A Tour in a Phaeton (1889) JJ Hissey p.147
This quote from Hissey refers to The Bell Inn at Saxmundham which today attracts the attention of an invertebrate known as “a foodie”.
“The annual migration of the chattering classes to the Suffolk coast is about to begin. Until now, foodies have had to soldier on between the oases of Orford and Southwold without so much as a sniff of a steamed sea bass on saffron risotto to keep them going. The Bell has changed all that. In the words of the great Leslie Phillips, "Ding dong".
By Tracey MacLeod The Independent on Saturday, 22 May 2004 http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/reviews/the-bell-hotel-saxmundham-suffolk-563855.html
Maybe my underlying criticism here is a bit harsh as the current owners, by all accounts, took a run down pub/hotel and turned it into something viable and vibrant. The position here is not to be a publuddite (sorry, just thought it was better sounding when they ran together) and I use The Bell only to illustrate changing circumstance.
Hissey was a wealthy man, anyone who can spend his time travelling around at a leisurely pace in a horse drawn carriage, stopping here and there to dispense a half crowns to locals and stay in old coaching inns night after night probably only had the callouses he sat on. I wonder if that wealthy Hissey would recognise The Bell and if he would applaud the new ways or find fault at loss of the old? A peep at their web site may inspire your answer: http://bellhotel-saxmundham.co.uk . It appears that they have modernised somewhat, about 2002 I believe, probably a somewhat rash expenditure for Norman's way of thinking.
So what has happened with our habit of going to the pub to eat and drink? This is so often the continental criticism of us English; that we drink and get drunk because we don't eat when we drink. We all know there is a truth here, we know this truth because our history is full of people going to inns and pubs to eat and drink, we know it because it has to be an unreasonable exception that, “All over Europe bars serve food and drink except in England”.
Now obviously this is a very loose thesis that would not stand the test of rigour. I hope though that you are willing to take my point in the general sense. We know we have always had a love of beer...
579. SUGAR BEER, - As many of our cottage readers may not be able to procure brewing apparatus, and as we wish that every labourer who requires beer may be able to brew his own, we will give him an excellent and wholesome beer, out of sugar and hops, with no other brewing apparatus than a washing copper, a hair sieve, and a cask;...
The Corner Cupboard (1858) Houlston and Wright, London. P202
… but what happened to our love of food?
I made a longish, tedious stay here; my Horse faring better than I did, in a good Stall, and with good Food: But my charge was very cheap, and the brown Bread excellent (white I always discard), nor was the Sage-Cheese amiss....I allways think of Dinner for...[half]...an hour before my arrival at the Inn, which gives me an appetite, and an hurry for eating; and I never Eat with so much good will, as when I come in heated, and can have my meat quickly; for then both Body and Mind are instantly Refreshed, and Recover'd.-
D
Eating........…Beef Steaks and..........................8
Drinking......…3 glasses B. and Water.............. 6
Horses...-...Hay and Corn............................... 5
Feeing.......two Servants................................. 4
....................................................... ________
............................................................... S1. 11
The George Inn, Silsoe
Saturday 30th May 1789
A Most Labourieuse Journeye
into Distant Counteyes;
Performyd by John Bynge June 1789
Perhaps we see one contributing factor here, that of the means of travel. Both Hissey and Bynge travelled by horse, though later Hissey would migrate 'toad like' to the motor car, and the inn served the function of a hotel on these long and dusty journeys. The suspicion has to be that Bynge would no more approve of The George today than Hissey would applaud The Bell. Once again, for your own conclusion the web site of The George possibly promises the same standards Bynge alleged 230 years ago: http://thegeorge-silsoe.co.uk/index.html .
defenestratethylacine
Between Bynge in 1789 and Hissey in 1889 their distance in time is greater than their distance in spirit, both are gentlemen of leisure who romance the open road and decry progress and the perils of fashionable travel. Perhaps the same can be said of Norman in 1989.
“...in the Summer, I cou'd wish to lounge about The Country, in Search of Antiquity, and The Beauties of Nature; finding myself at an Inn, free, unembarrassed, How unlike the foreign traveller, who at the end of three (lost) years Returns (after much Expence, and Dupage) in full Self-Sufficency, Equipped with an amazing Rage for Opera, and Vertu...”
Author's Introduction
A Most Labourieuse Journeye
into Distant Counteyes;
Performyd by John Bynge June 1789
“The fortunate possessors of horses must keep them somewhere, and they do not cost so very much more on the road than 'eating their heads off' doing nothing in their stables at home, whilst perchance their owners are absent at some fashionable watering-place, repeating their life in London second-hand by the sea, or it may be rushing about restlessly here and there, as fast as the railway and steamer will carry them, spending much, travelling far and seeing little. 'La rapidite, voila le reve de notre siecle.' says Theophile Gautier. 'We cannot travel fast enough, we must get quickly through the country – comprehend nothing, admire nothing, only arrive quickly.'
A Tour in a Phaeton (1889) JJ Hissey p.3/4
So here we have two gentlemen of leisure who spend their summers on horses or pulled by them around the old inns of England. Wealthy romantics who can afford to view their present from their past. Perhaps we have to make sure that we too do not 'arrive quickly' in our judgement of the value of their view of their day. Could it be that Norman of The Bridge, now sadly 'one of the many' as Hissey described the departed long before we had more living on this planet than had ever lived before, could it be that Norman in his snug would welcome John Bynge and James John Hissey and both would chide his family for their dreadful modernisation in 1909?
Where did the eating with the drinking go? Times change, they always have done and always will, except for those who are fortunate enough to possess a horse. Perhaps it is all just a sign of the times.
“Ahhh.. we have never sold them,” said Norman and nodded sagely, “they are to discourage the unworthy.”
“Quite right sir” said John Bynge.
“After you with the chunk pork pie my lord.” said James John Hissey.
And the sun set peacefully over a scene of mythic England.
defenestratethylacine
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