Pub Odyssey 27

Tuesday 12 July:  THE WOODMAN, CHAPMORE END (Chris Haden, Mike Horsman, Elvis Pile, Steve Stott, Andrew Swift, Roger Toms, John Westwood)

COMMENT:  I said that last week's pub, the Rose and Crown in Tewin, was a true village pub uncontaminated by forces of progress like stagecoach routes or railways; but compared with the Woodman the Rose is the last word in metropolitan sophistication.  The Woodman is first recorded in 1851 as a basic little two up/two down timber framed lath and plaster building with stables where the car park now is. Needless to say it was only a beerhouse. Previous to its reincarnation as a pub, it is rumoured to have been a slaughterhouse.  I've seen a picture of it in 1908, looking very little different from now.

In such a truly rural venue "the Woodman" is a good name for a pub (though there are plenty of Woodmans in London, twenty-five in 2006). The woodman was an important rural figure, tending the woods and forests as well as cutting down trees. Even now, you really wouldn't have been surprised if a man in a smock with an axe had walked into the Chapmore End pub while we were having lunch. The pub's layout (small cramped rooms) screamed of a bygone era and would you believe it, the beer was served by gravity from the barrel.  This is rare indeed today in pubs (though funnily enough the very next day I was in another pub on the Thames  near Oxford which also served beer by gravity).  Not everyone liked the beer; my Greene King IPA was very good but the "Ale Fresco" went down badly with some customers.  That, though, might relate to the beer's basic taste rather than its presentation  The food was fine, in the tradition of solid honest pub grub.