‘A warm-hearted spot with obliging staff, good food, gracefully homey rooms and a genial community feel’, Piers Baker’s 15th-century inn is ‘a good place in which to find oneself’, say Guide inspectors in 2017. ‘This is what pubs were meant to look like: low-beamed ceilings, wide wooden floorboards, red banquettes, the comforting smell of log fires merrily burning; in the oak-panelled lounge, a comely mishmash of sofas and armchairs. Behind the curving elm bar, the barman was a young, tattooed, flannelled chap with an enormous ear piercing and an easy disposition.’ Bedrooms are individually designed. ‘Dovecot, our well-lit room, smallish but sufficient, had crisp bedlinens, puffy pillows, a deep armchair, ground coffee, chic teas – all you could wish for, except a solid wall to the bathroom (we’d been warned – choose another room if you value privacy).’ Chef Jack Levine’s cooking is ‘modern English pubby via Italy’; a dish of lemon sole on the bone was ‘well conceived, with bursts of salty cockles’. While St Mary’s church clock chimes, breakfast on croissants, fruit compotes and thick yogurt, and ‘skilfully cooked’ hot dishes.