There are pubs around the country that are forever England. These crooked places are full of beer, pies and landlords who joke; of shaggy dogs, bent cauldrons hanging from Tudor beams, of men in waistcoats who will pretend to not be very good at pool.
These exist in their hundreds, thousands, each one a place to rest. Drive to any corner of any county and there will be a boozer ready and willing. For our weekly Country Pub of the Week column, we head out in search of them, leaving London to drink at those we think justify an expedition.
Here are our favourites so far in 2025. Visit any one of them, bed in and remember that Britain still had plenty of glimpses of greatness left yet.
The Blue Ball Inn, Grantchester
One of those names that might have visiting Americans sniggering — google it for the slang — this pretty, petite pub is thought to actually take its name from a hot air balloon that landed opposite; sketches of it are not in short supply. A free house, beers are local and cared about; prices are low. It is the sort of pub to come to with a dog, both of you exhausted from the walk, and settle in for an afternoon of idle chatter, until the light goes, and the table leaves blinking into the darkness, wondering where the time went.
The Mayfly, Stockbridge
The Mayfly, something of a celebrity pub to those in Stockbridge, is the balm for those with ears ringing from traffic. It is surely among the handsomest pubs in the country, lounging as it does by a muttering weir on the River Test. The water blooms and moves and soothes. Don’t jump in. What The Mayfly specialises in is serenity. Linger as the light goes, let your shoulders drop. The office is miles off yet.
The Tartar Frigate, Broadstairs
Broadstairs tells stories of many times: a chapel built in 1350, smuggling tunnels from the 1700s, Charles Dickens’ holiday home in the 1850s and 60s. Morelli’s is both an ice cream parlour and a museum, its candyfloss pink interior untouched since 1957. On the front there is the Tartar Frigate, a flint-built pub some 300-or-so years old, that used to be a sailors’ place. Now, instead of stubbled men with watery eyes, the place fills with the town, both its locals and its tourists. In that way, the Frigate is that noble thing, a pub truly for anyone, for everyone.
The Greyhound, Beaconsfield
The Greyhound is not a Russian doll or a tardis, but like them it offers endless surprises. It is unassuming from the outside, another pretty whitewashed pub in the calm of one of those genteel market towns that form the skeleton of the Home Counties. But inside, though it is cosseting in an old world, wood-beamed way, what appears to be a pub dissolves into a restaurant that Michelin surely must have missed on their jollies this way.
The Oakley Arms, Harrold
The sleepy Bedfordshire village of Harrold is characterised by stone cottages, a 14th-century bridge and thatched roofs, the most impressive of which sits atop The Oakley Arms. A sign by the entrance reads: “Good food, good wine, good times”. It's not wrong.
The Bell Inn, Aldworth
People fly for restaurants, but rarely cross town for a bar. Pubs occupy a middle ground: they are places that reward most at the end of a long walk. One pub that must be walked to is the Bell Inn, which sits in a hamlet so tiny it is the only noteworthy thing there. Once a manor house built in the 1400s, it has been a pub run by the same family for some 255 years, and twice named CAMRA’s pub of the year.
The Falkland Arms, Cotswolds
Those who want a weekend escape in the Cotswolds would do well to consider the Falkland Arms, a modish pub walkable from Soho Farmhouse (intoxication depending). It is famous now, having been used as a location for Amazon Prime gangster show MobLand (apparently sales are up about 500 per cent). Pierce Brosnan’s character Conrad Harrigan tells his cronies the pub does “nice pints” — absolutely true — and is joined there by his fixer Harry Da Souza (Tom Hardy). Word is, both stopped by for a pint of Guinness in real life.
The Angel on the Bridge, Henley-on-Thames
Pubs are keepers, protectors, collectors. Mostly of memories — walk in and there they are, behind the bar with the optics. The Angel, a pretty, black-and-white beamed Georgian place that stands tall beside the Thames, is full of them — there are the regulars here, the ones who only stop in before and after the Regatta, those on a weekend away.
The Bell Inn, Langford
It is the done thing, sometimes, to characterise the Cotswolds as a Stepford mess of villages bound by furious arguments over walled gardens and flower arranging. But it has its quirks, too: the wonky Bell is one. It looks as though it’s had a drink. Wheels are not being reinvented or reshaped, but the execution is undeniable. Have the sticky toffee pudding, ask for sherry on the ice cream, and leave cheerful, glad the old place is still just about upright.
The Old Coastguard, Mousehole
Along this Cornish clifftop, the Old Coastguard is waiting. It's a pub perched above Mousehole Rock Pool – for sea swimming – and helpfully positioned ahead of Mousehole village. It would be remiss to skip past it without stopping for a beer or a glass of wine. Inside is a fancy place of refuge: bougie, sure, but still Cornish.
The Maybush, Newbridge
On the bank of the Thames in Oxfordshire, the Maybush sits peering at the Rose Revived, its opposite number across a 13th-century bridge. Between them, boats hum and gin is put away. It’s had a bit of a time of it — closed between 2011 and 2015, then again between 2018 and 2020. But there is something indefatigable about the place. It is somewhere to be a straggler in: another bottle of wine, a missed train, thoughts of buying the place.
The Peacock Inn, Chelsworth
The timber-framed pink houses of the village of Chelsworth in Suffolk break all the laws of structural engineering: windows slant one way, doors another. The best seats in the house are two button-backed leather armchairs in the bar, opposite more of those wildly weathered beams and next to a fireplace big enough for an ox. The man who found the chairs at an antique shop and begged a lift to bring them back? Jack Butler, surely one of the friendliest men ever to pull a pint. He loves the place, so will you.
The Old Crown, Girton
Few pubs survive on beer alone. In Girton, a pretty but unattractively named village north of Cambridge, is the Old Crown. Rumours abound that it is the largest thatched pub in the country. It is a pub proper, with good beer, a telly showing the football and a decent garden. Dogs are welcome, parking is free. But now it draws a crowd for its first-rate Nepalese cooking. Adapt or die, that’s the ticket.
The Anchor Inn, Seatown
Tucked away beneath the green hills where Devon meets Dorset is the Anchor Inn, an old fisherman’s haunt that now operates as a veritable gastropub, serving lobster rolls, fish and chips and slow-roasted lamb. On one side of the Anchor are cliffs, the odd cow and plenty of ramblers — a bracing walk should precede any visit — and on the other, blue waves and a sweeping orange beach. There are rooms too: eat, drink and fall asleep to the sound of the sea, before waking up with a swim. Heaven.
The Chainbridge Inn, Usk
The Chainbridge is the kind of place you go to for your tea, and perched atop the banks of the River Usk with a spectacular view of the strikingly green bridge that gives the pub its name, why wouldn’t you? During the winter months, cosy up in the dining room, relishing the warmth of the roaring log burners. Come summer, grab a table outside if you’re early enough or budge up on the end of someone else’s.
The Mason’s Arms, Devon
Many of you will have heard of the Donkey Sanctuary. Big advertisers on the TV, traditionally. But never mind the donkeys, because there’s one of the best examples of a West Country pub nearby. The Mason’s Arms in Branscombe, East Devon, is a haven of a pub; a 14th century boozer with a roaring fire — two roaring fires — a solid list of cask ales and a food menu that deviates from proper homemade soup to locally caught fish.
The Gurnard’s Head, Cornwall
The Gurnard’s Head could make a claim for being the best country pub in the land, certainly west of Bristol. Perched on a clifftop, the roaring Atlantic is nearby; lush farms and winding lanes surround it. Outside and the pub is cast in striking yellow; within, everywhere is charming wood and rickety things, the odd fisherman or local artist perched drinking ale as tourists sit in the art-filled dining room next door.
The Leicester Arms, Penhurst
There is an England I sometimes dream of, of cricket on the green and sausages for breakfast, of gin and tonics come noon and organ music drifting in from far away. It is an England of Nelson and William Blake, but also of James Mason and Terry-Thomas, of drop-top Austin-Healeys and sunburn. And it still exists here.
The Fox and Duck, Therfield
What makes Therfield a village? Choices are limited: it’s down to the church, or this place. The Fox & Duck must surely have it by a whisker — the church is grander, but attendance is far higher here. The pub sits on the village green, dotted with picnic benches.
The Golden Lion, Newport
The Golden Lion has been keeping travellers fed and watered ever since it opened in the 17th-century as a coach house. With dark stone walls, roaring fires and a low, beamed ceiling, the bar has everything wanted from a proper boozer, while the light and airy dining room is more modern, but more versatile too. Upstairs, there are 13 bedrooms. Unlucky for some but perfect for those who want to set up camp for a few days of beach hopping.
The Lamb Inn, Little Milton
Sometimes refreshment begets refreshment. It followed a long meal at Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir — where wine waiters are famous for their heavy hand —that the Lamb first came up. “But where do you go for a pint?” I prodded the by-now alarmed waiter, who'd attempted but failed to herd our rabble into the bar. Here is the answer.
The Crooked Billet, Stoke Row
Paul Clerehugh is one of those chefs famous not just to the locals in the cheese shops, but in the restaurant world generally, partly as the Billet can stake a claim as the country’s first gastropub, besting the Eagle in Farringdon by two years. It is perhaps perfect.
The Olde Bell, Rye
Given it was built in 1390, it feels more fitting to refer to Rye’s oldest pub as Ye Olde Bell, despite the fact it’s known as The Olde Bell today. Hear ye, it is a sumptuous haven of a place, timber-framed and cloaked in Tudor beams; a crooked, dainty boozer with, oddly enough, a menu of Greek meze.
The Jolly Cricketers, Beaconsfield
The Jolly Cricketers wasn’t always jolly; once it was just the Cricketers, and jolliness was kept to a minimum — at least when the landlord was behind the bar and suspiciously eyeing newcomers. But now, times have changed.
The Hare and Hounds, Aberthin
Aberthin’s Hare & Hounds has been keeping locals fed and watered for the past 300 years. Head chef Tom Watts-Jones, formerly of Anchor & Hope and St John, returned to his teenage boozer in 2015 with a plan to well and truly prove Welsh cooking is so much more than a sorry-looking bowl of cawl. Consider it a job well done.
The Swan Inn, Fittleworth
Nestled in a pretty, sleepy West Sussex village in the South Downs National Park, the newly-reopened Swan Inn in Fittleworth is looking spiffier than ever.
The Harcourt Arms, Oxfordshire
The first thing to know about the Harcourt Arms is that rooms start from about £100 a night. Remarkably cheap for the Home Counties, not least considering this is for a large double, comfortably done up and with breakfast included.
The Flowing Well, Sunningwell
The Flowing Well in Oxfordshire has a fun recent history. From the early 2000s until about five years ago, it was owned by a chef-musician couple. The chef, Jo, would cook excellent pub classics alongside a teenager who now writes about food and drink for this paper.
The Crown, Mundford
The Crown in Mundford has taken many forms. It dates back to 1652, first as a place of refuge for weary travellers passing through Thetford Forest. Then it was a hunting inn and the local magistrates’ court for a time.
The Rising Sun, Oxfordshire
Sometimes pubs are looked for, other times they come as mirages. The Rising Sun appears from nowhere for the weary traveller, with arms open for those collapsing at the top of Witheridge Hill. It is in a part of England so pretty it might make you weep, a world of winding lanes, lattice windows and church bells on the breeze.
The Royal Standard of England, Beaconsfield
Who has the rightful claim to being Britain’s oldest pub is a contended title. One is the Royal Standard of England, which dates back to either 1100 or 1213, depending on who you ask.
