A pub with rooms, a brewery and a distillery? No wonder The Bell at Ramsbury has won a top award
The AA Pub of the Year 2018 for England is The Bell at Ramsbury. As you might expect from such an accolade, it’s a thriving and congenial place where the cooking and the comfort, including in its nine bedrooms, are all of a very high standard and all in sync. But before I describe its charms, it’s worth pointing out that there’s more to The Bell than meets the eye. It’s not just any old posh dining pub: it’s part of an admirable mini ecosystem, one that nicely reflects three preoccupations of modern middle-class life: food, drink and eco-friendliness.
So nicely, indeed, that Prince Charles recently paid a visit to The Bell and toured Ramsbury Estate, both owned by Swedish H&M magnate Stefan Persson. Surrounded by flunkeys, His Royal Highness probably didn’t sample the extra benefits of The Bell in quite the same way as us.
Not being on a royal visit, we were slumped on a comfy sofa when trendily bulbous glasses of Ramsbury’s own fresh and floral Single Estate Gin and velvety Single Estate Vodka were served to us, plus a pint of Ramsbury Gold for our friend, who lives in the village and had come to join us. He could have opted for Flint Knapper, Silver Pig Stout or one of the half dozen or so other real ales made at Ramsbury’s brewery.
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One can see why sustainability-minded Prince Charles had heard of the estate and was curious about it. As well as farming around 7,000 acres across 27 farms, plus great swathes of woodland and forestry, Ramsbury has diversified of late into other rural ventures, all sited together on one farm: brewery, distillery, smokehouse, oil press and shop. More home-grown products are planned for the future.
The enterprise provides local employment and is ecologically sound, using crops and botanicals grown on the farm and recycling the waste, with a reed bed filtration system set up by the local wildlife trust for the removal of effluent from the brewery.
It’s all terribly neat and clean too: urbanites can keep their rural chic Penelope Chilvers ankle boots on without changing into wellies because mud does not appear to exist. See where your gin, vodka and beer is made (tours are available) then drink it in the comfort of your weekend bolt-hole. Just what a town mouse on a country break yearns for.
You couldn’t choose a more congenial bolt-hole than Ramsbury. Set in the lovely Kennet Valley amid ancient Wiltshire landscape, it’s a large, attractive village that, in the days when it was on the main road between Bristol and London, had nine public houses. A church has stood here for 1,100 years and has its own suffragan bishop, first created in AD909. The houses along the pretty, narrow High Street have gardens that back on to the watery tributaries of the Kennet. It’s a place I’ve long known and has always had a great community spirit (the Ramsbury dads were meeting in the brewery to watch the rugby together the day we visited) though nowadays the mums, who congregate in The Bell’s cosy Café Bella after dropping their kids at the primary school, are a notably more well-heeled lot than of yore.
Stefan Persson and his wife bought the 300-year-old coaching inn eight years ago and its top-to-toe makeover still seems fresh, with a pretty dining room that feels almost French with its café curtains, wall mirrors and banquettes. Two amusing paintings in the bar each depict a clutch of American presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, drinking and chatting around a pool table.
There’s a constant buzz and a tight-knit team headed by experienced hotelier Matt Saxton. The bedrooms are soothing and comfortable without being memorable. Basins, with usefully roomy surrounds and big mirrors, in the bedrooms rather than the small bathrooms, are a welcome touch. Everything is in mint condition.
In the bar it would be churlish not to try the estate’s own gin, vodka and ales, and in the restaurant its rare-breed pork, smoked venison and duck, and ruby-red beef, plus fruit and vegetables in season from its market garden.
Before your starter arrives, you’ll be dipping your homemade bread in the estate’s surprisingly piquant rapeseed oil. As for the menu, from chef Jonas Lodge, dishes are carefully cooked and presented, though the choice is somewhat limited and unimaginative.
But if imagination is lacking on that front, it’s certainly not lacking on the estate as a whole.
Doubles from ￡120 per night, including breakfast; not suitable for guests using wheelchairs.
? Read the full review: The Bell at Ramsbury
