SHOULD an A-Board in Mandarin suddenly appear outside the Anglers Rest in Bamford then phase two of the community pub’s renewal plan is well under way.
Having just celebrated its tenth anniversary of being taken over by the village – a journey through Covid and high water – the pub’s bosses want to cement its future as Bamford’s heart: not just a pub but a post office, cafe, meeting place and until recently, a Royal Mail sorting centre.
It’s the start of the Pennine Way so a great fuelling stop for hikers and, curiously, hordes of Chinese students who take the trains from Sheffield and Manchester and tramp past the pub up steep Bamford Edge, a gritstone overhang which features in the Chinese geology curriculum.
Just say the pub could offer bao buns or Gochuchang sticky chicken wings to make them feel at home (and point out a shorter route to the top which has evaded Google) it would help them stay in the black.
But noodles for Chinese students or bacon sandwiches for hungry hikers are not going to save the Anglers alone.
Such are the economics of pub life that Bamford, population barely 1,000, cannot support the Angler’s simply as a watering hole.
It has to become a dining destination for a larger cachement area while maintaining the tricky balancing act of not frightening away or outpricing the locals.
And the villagers who run the cosy, sprawling pub with oak beams and flagstone floor think they have the answer.
The other night I sat down to dinner with Anne-Marie Clark, one of the directors, at a special tasting menu evening and it just wasn’t the excellence of the chicken snitzel with black garlic that put a smile on her face.
It was she who was responsible for hooking the new chef, John Parsons, who takes over as General Manager and was using the evening as a soft launch for his new kitchen.
John, who as readers of this blog will know has a glittering reputation and his own loyal following in the Hope Valley, had long been a target of the Anglers.
So when she heard he was weighing anchor after a successful spell at the nearby Sir William Hotel she cast out a line – and hooked him.
John, aged 50, was a willing ‘capture.’ Indeed it is something of a surprise he has not been there sooner as he has worked at practically every other venue of note in the area.
“It’s great for an old chef like me to do something for the community. I am really excited about it,” he says after close of service.
And he echoes Anne-Marie who points out “We cannot survive unless we become a destination pub for food.”
The Post Office section is not making money but closure is not an option for many of the original 328 shareholders who raised £263,500 ten years ago to buy it from pubco Admiral, saving it from a property investor and keeping the business which the pub had absorbed.
Now the directors need as much again, around £250,000 for refurbishment, equipment and so on. While some will come from grants, a Restore the Angler’s Appeal has a target of £60,000.
The Anglers and its new chef both have form when it comes to good food. This was the pub where the late David Baldwin made his name in the late Sixties and early Seventies before going on to found the Omega banqueting suite in Sheffield. They used to arrive at the Anglers in coachloads.
Since then the food or service offering has not always been consistent, something which should be put right by the arrival of John and his deputy Jo Doyle as bar manager.
John’s esoteric menus can juggle old favourites like meat and potato pie or Sheffield fishcake with noodles, shakshouka and falafel.
He also has plans to shake up the hikers breakfast menu and offer “something banging.”
Jo meanwhile, who is well known in Sheffield beer circles, including at stint at the Sheaf, Heeley, is planning to introduce the pub’s own beer to make full use of its status as a free house.
The tasting menu gave guests an introduction, if they needed it, of the Anglers’ new menu. Among my favourites were the schnitzel, gutsy meatballs in a tomato sauce and a caramelised sweet potato majoring in a vegan ‘shepherd’s pie.’
On the pub menu is John’s much copied signature dish, Dixie’s Three Little Pigs, named after his daughter: fillet, belly, cheek, black pudding, apple and ‘pig’s head sauce.’ She and her brother are among the 20 staff, mostly part-time, the pub employs.
It’s a new lease of life for the former Victorian farmhouse turned coaching inn which as Derbyshire’s first community pub has inspired other villages throughout the country to follow suit.
Meanwhile Anne-Marie and her fellow directors are thinking of other ways to pull in the punters and the pounds. The pub has accommodation that could be used as a ‘bunkhouse’ for holidaymakers.
Pubs like the Anglers Rest were once the life and soul of a village. Should they stutter, owned by faceless pubcos who care only for cash and not community, they can easily be lost. The cost is not only bricks and mortar but a sense of neighbourhood.
Anne-Marie’s partner Dave Speake says: “Since coming to the village we have known far more people than we did before through the pub.”
And fellow villager and director Frank Bigley adds: “There are many reasons why people choose to live in a village and one of them is if there is a pub.”
Anne-Marie looks pleased with the evening. “We have survived ten years which is quite an achievement.” She can drink a toast to that when the pub’s new beer arrives.
The Anglers Rest is at Taggs Knoll, Bamford, Hope Valley S33 0DY. Tel: 01433 659 317. Web http://www.anglers.rest
It is open all week except Monday.
Another helping from Martin Dawes 