Some time ago, we used to frequent a rural pub called The White Hart.
When I say frequent, I mean maybe once a month, as tax on English beer is probably the most successful teetotal medicine I’ve ever taken.
It was in a village about 15km away, but we liked its country atmosphere and it had a willow tree in the garden where the kids could swing. They also would run races around the ground so the adults could get on with the more serious business of quaffing malt and hops.
The barman was an elderly Canadian and I asked what brought him out here.
He said he had arrived a decade ago for a holiday, fell in love with English village life, and never left.
He wasn’t the owner, or even the proper barman. He was just unpaid help because the actual owner had terminal cancer.
This seemed to carry on for some time and the Canadian was always there, helping out his friend so the bar wouldn’t close in his illness.
The village is on a ‘rat run’ that I sometimes use coming home from work when the motorways are jammed – something not that unusual.
I travel on three different motorways and a perfect storm is when all are simultaneously gridlocked. The only way through is a ‘rat run’ along narrow village lanes.
Anyway, earlier this year I saw a ‘for sale’ sign outside The White Hart and so figured the owner must have died and his Canadian friend moved back to the Rockies.
The White Hart was 600 years old, so it would soon be just another piece of ‘olde’ England gone.
Some months passed and driving through the village to evade yet another traffic-jam fest I noticed to my surprise that the pub was still there. Except it was no longer called The White Hart. It was now The Shurlock Inn.
This was not in the sense of ‘no …er, sherbet Sherlock’ immortalised by the famous detective; instead Shurlock Row is the name of the village.
I decided to pay a visit and dragged management along for a cold pint, purely to research this column, you understand.
What I discovered was in fact a remarkable community story. The owner had died, as I assumed, and the developers had started to move in. The villagers were appalled – this was their local watering hole and it was going to be bulldozed flat and turned into snazzy theme cottages for rich Londoners wanting a bolthole in the country.
So the Canadian guy, whose name was George Hulme, had a brainwave. Why not buy the pub? He didn’t have the money, but over a couple of brewskis, he floated the idea to fellow imbibers.
Even after the hangovers the next day, it was remembered what a jolly good idea everyone thought that was. So George crunched some numbers, drew up a plan, and banged on village doors.
The result was staggering. All the villagers he canvassed ponied up some cash. The community now owns the pub, or has a stake in it. They have given it a much-needed facelift (‘olde’ English charm can only go so far when mould and cobwebs start to overrun the premises), brought in a skilled chef, and are back in business.
Most tourists regard the traditional English pub as one of the main charms of the country, and you can see why. Sitting with a brewski beside a log fire in winter, or outside in a summer garden lined with hedgerows and oaks, it has a magic that is difficult to replicate anywhere else.
Yet country pubs are now closing at the rate of two a day. People can’t afford to drink out anymore due to an iniquitous beer tax and the stringent drink-driving laws make it impossible to visit a pub further than a mile away unless you have boring designated drivers.
It’s difficult to argue with the latter, but the former is doing immense harm to the fabric of English rural life.
But not in Shurlock Row.
The only flaw is I wish they had called the pub ‘No s#^t Shurlock’.
