PINT TO PINT

The Woolpack, Beverley, East Yorkshire

The Woolpack is a perfect exemplar of an old rural pub. You are mildly surprised that the three benches outside the front door are not populated by ancient yokels.

Inside doesn’t disappoint: a single room with, in one corner, a wooden snug lined with gnarled benches. Yet this bucolic boozer (dating from around 1831) is tucked away in a zone of covetable houses near the centre of well-heeled Beverley.

Despite its Camra classification as a Real Heritage Pub, the Woolpack has been through a rocky patch recently. All that is at an end, according to new gaffer Paul Clarke, who took over in mid-september.

“Reg’lars won’t go into town even through it’s only five minutes away,” said Clarke, beaming behind his burnished beer engines. “Word went round that the Woolpack was back open. They told me, ‘ You’ll be busy on Friday’ and they were right. We sold 18 gallons of Wainwright’s in three hours. There was no food but the takings were £700. People coming in all said, ‘This is how it used to be.’ We have no music, no phones, no fruit machines. It’s just a proper pub.”

He intends remedying the nutritional shortage in the near future with a compact menu of Woolpack favourites, such as beef and ale pie, augmented by newcomers like the roast beef and dripping sandwiches that were a speciality of Clarke’s late father, who ran the Duke of Cumberland in nearby Cottingham. “One thing we’re not doing is steak. You can get that everywhere.”

Locals tend to congregate around the bar and in the snug, though they will politely make room in the latter for canine visitors. The pub’s dog-friendly corner is well equipped with Bonios and other snacks for the waggy-tailed. That’s the only food available on Mondays, which is darts night.

When Clarke’s clientele polished off the Wainwright’s (a lightly hopped refresher of 4.15 abv), they traded up to a marginally more hefty offering also from Marston’s. Sunbeam is 4.25 and imbued with a distinctive grapefruit zestiness. “A really, really nice drink,” enthused Clarke. “At the end of the night, everyone thanked me.”

37 Westwood Road, Beverley, East Yorkshire HU17 8EN; 01482 867095