An old brick-built pub where the licence has been in the same family for 250 years. It stands off the main road in a small village high on the Berkshire Downs, but only a couple of miles away from the Thames at Goring Gap. It won CAMRA’s National Pub of the Year award in 1990 and 2019 – making it the current holder (May 2022), and its unspoilt interior qualifies it for a full entry on the National Inventory.
The core of the pub is the glazed bar servery with sliding sash windows, one of very few now remaining. On the left is the tap room, with its quarry-tiled floor, inglenook fireplace, high-backed settles and scrubbed-top tables. To the right is a slightly more modern L-shaped room wrapping around the servery, with more benches and wood panelling, that was opened out as recently as 1974. The front of the servery holds an impressive display of pumpclips from the defunct West Berkshire Brewery.
Six beers are usually available, with Arkell’s BBB, Indigenous Baldrick and Rebellion Roasted Nuts as regulars plus three guests, mainly sourced from local microbreweries. Food is limited to soup and rolls with a variety of meat and cheese fillings. It is another of those predominantly wet-led rural pubs with a cross-section of customers that crop up in places in the South but are pretty much entirely absent from the North of England.
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