The Talbot Inn

Take a historic village inn, then reinvent it as a dining-pub-with-rooms, in shabby-chic style, for the modern era. It’s a formula which Dan Brod, Charlie Luxton and Matt Greenlees have perfected with their trio of Bramley Bars (see also The Beckford Arms, Tisbury, and The Lord Poulett Arms, Hinton St George). The Talbot, a 15th-century coaching inn built around a cobbled courtyard, also features a beamed coach house where food is grilled on charcoal and wood, as in traditional inns. In addition, the restaurant is a ‘sequence of homely rooms’ where the food is ‘of a very high standard’. It might include anything from a simple ploughman’s or burger to dishes such as salted Atlantic cod, duck-fat pommes Anna, cauliflower purée and pickled cauliflower. Upstairs, the keenly priced bedrooms are more contemporary, with an emperor bed, vintage Welsh blankets, seagrass flooring, comfy chairs and handmade Bramley toiletries. Do visit the sitting room in the old tithe barn, which has a mural by local artists Fleur Kelly and Diana Byrne, depicting the magic of Mells through 
time (including the exploits of local man little 
Jack Horner).