AN INSPECTOR CALLS
His mission: To test hotel hospitality to the limit
ALMOST the first thing you see on the Pembroke Arms website is ‘Funerals’. Click on it and there’s information about ‘After Funeral Receptions’, with a cheery reminder that the inn is only ten to 15 minutes away from the local crematorium.
Thank goodness there are more upbeat reasons why you might want to stay here.
Price is one of them. I’m paying £75 for B&B on a Sunday evening. ‘Roasting All Day’, says the sign outside this handsome old boozer in the middle of the Wilton Estate on the outskirts of Salisbury.
There are nine rooms. I am meant to be in a small double, but it only has a shower and so I ask the polite young man behind the bar if I can switch. He says that because I have pre-paid it might be tricky.
‘How many other rooms are taken this evening?’ I ask. ‘None, actually,’ he says. ‘Then slip me in a bigger one with a bath. You won’t get in any trouble.’
So he does — in the ‘Queen’s Bedchamber’, where the bathroom is decorated in pages from the June 1953 Coronation edition of Queen magazine. Cleaning your teeth has never been more diverting.
The pictures and text are duly deferential, but I like the ads. Asprey’s and the pricey Gleneagles Hotel are there, so, too, are the Hillman Minx and Kia Ora fruit squash.
Downstairs, the bar and restaurant areas are spacious and informal, with proper polished (and some bashed) tables. I start with marinated artichoke and sun-dried tomato (terrific), followed by roast lamb (unexciting). I should have had the rib-eye steak, with chips, grilled tomato, mushrooms and salad — all for £14.95.
Combine staying here with a visit to Wilton House, where the energetic Earl of Pembroke and his family have injected new life into their stately home, with 14,000 surrounding acres.
I like one of the breakfast offerings: black pudding on fried bread with an egg on top. The food police would be aghast, replete with warnings about an early visit to that crematorium. The Pembroke Arms Minster Street, Wilton, Salisbury SP2 OBH
01722 743 328, pembrokearms.co.uk Doubles from £150 B&B