If I tell you the story of the villagers of South Stoke, near Bath, saving The Packhorse Inn and turning it into a “community pub”, you may think it an excellent premise for a six-part BBC One Sunday-night drama. Martin Clunes and Anne Reid would be absolute shoo-ins.
A hulking, ramshackle boozer is up for sale in a part of the country so beautiful, it makes city dwellers like me stop the car to gawp at the bucolic landscape. Property developers circle, eyeing up the ancient building and the overgrown land surrounding it, hoping to turn it into a luxury home and so stripping the village of a pub that has worked as social glue for at least 150 years. At this point, in episode one of The Packhorse, Aidan Turner, formerly of Poldark, appears with his top off, carrying a scythe and chopping moodily yet with great purpose through knotweed. He’s going to save the pub.
OK, in real life, saving The Packhorse took around seven years, dozens of locals and hundreds of hours of tedious meetings, letter-writing and begging for cash. Still, the fact that South Stoke fought back against planners and found 200 people to pitch in the initial £600k to secure the building, before rebuilding and running it themselves, is nothing short of heroic.
There’s something poignant about the photographs on the pub’s website of locals pushing wheelbarrows of rubble out of the derelict shack and rolling turf on to the new lawn. Dreams can come true.
Today, The Packhorse is potentially one of Britain’s loveliest olde-English watering holes. It’s less a gastropub and more a Grade II-listed building with inglenooks and ancient beams that sells Honey’s Cider from nearby Midford and an option to buy a basket of fresh whitebait with chicken salt and cracked pepper mayonnaise, smoked salt-rubbed bavette steak with fries or fresh mackerel with turmeric-pickled cucumber. Straightforward deliciousness with bagfuls of detail.
Chef James Harris came from a respected pub with food, the King William in Bath, and cites Allium in Bath and Lucknam Park in Wiltshire on his CV. He isn’t serving arty-farty flourishes of distilled wotnot to attract food snobs, but nor is he bunging scampi in a basket. Instead, he’s doing exactly what country pubs need to do nowadays, which is take great, fresh, lovingly sourced local produce and arrange it in a memorable manner.
A plate of spiced apple cake, more of a loaf, sticks in my mind, the sponge sweet and fragrant, and served with a dark puddle of pickled raisins the likes of which I’ve not tasted since the late 1970s, when my grandmother would turn all spare things to chutney.
The cake and raisins came armed with a wodge of Ashlynn goat’s cheese from Worcestershire, a semi-soft cheese that’s hand-dipped in vegetable ash, giving it a slightly gothic appearance. I ate this with a small glass of Somerset cider brandy sitting in a stone-floored tap room next to what may be priest hideyholes, which have led some local historians to guess that the room dates from Henry VIII’s first Act of Supremacy.
It felt quite magical. Like visiting a National Trust Building and going straight to the best part – the tea room – without first having to endure two hours of thimble collections and antimacassars.
Other highlights of the menu on the Saturday we visited included a smoked beef hotdog in a bun served with jalapeños and a generous covering of crisp onions and vivid yellow American mustard. A well-judged piece of cod came on top of a gently curried bowl of quinoa dal made with grains from nearby Bath Farm Girls. Service was just as good, if a bit stretched, because the place is enormous. At its busiest, running it must be akin to crowd control.
House wines begin at £18.50 for a bottle of Las Condes Sauvignon Blanc and stretch to £34 for a bottle of petit chablis. If I lived locally, I’d come here a lot to take advantage of the views, the booze and the neverending supply of local intrigue as villagers stop by to check up on their investment.
In the final episode of my imaginary BBC One drama, The Packhorse, the locals would celebrate their victory with a concert in the garden. Landlord Martin Clunes would rock out with a guitar and inevitably snog Sheridan Smith, who plays the barmaid who never stopped believing in him.
As I left the pub, I saw a sign on the noticeboard that said, “Tomorrow 1pm Packstock! The tent is up. The bands are booked! Tomorrow, we start another tradition.” The Packhorse is a wonderful example of how stranger things can happen.
• The Packhorse Inn Old School Hill, South Stoke, Bath, Somerset, 01225 830300. Open lunch Tues-Sun, noon-2.30pm (5pm Sun); dinner Tues-Sat 6-9.30pm. About £30 a head for three courses à la carte, plus drinks and service.
Food 8/10
Atmosphere 9/10
Service 8/10