The Holly Bush, Farnham

Quite bizarre, this is a Hoxton hipster pub in a small upmarket village. Two rooms, the left one is large distressed area with school chairs from the tip, stripped tables, deliberately worn paint on the tongue and groove wall cladding. The ceiling has been removed to expose the roof vaulting. In at least a faint nod to its surroundings there is a wood burning stove. Covered patio and grassed rear area. Three pumps with two on - Bowman Swift One (decent), Hogs Back TEA (weak). Expensive, over 4 quid for two halves. The baseball capped barman decided to enhance the ambience by loudly banging chairs and dragging tables around without a faint bit of acknowledgement that this was making us feel utterly unwelcome. A pub to remember – for all the wrong reasons.

This is a smart, slightly upmarket rural pub in a pleasant village close to Frensham Ponds. The pub has a fairly modern looking exterior and I found it hard to work out if it was a relatively new build or just well looked after. There are two bars to choose from – the front bar set up in typical food-led, rural pub style with the bar on the left as you enter and plenty of standard seating throughout. We opted for the other room though, which is housed in a large, almost square room with a very high gabled ceiling, reminiscent of a barn. The room is bare boarded with wood panelled walls painted in neutral colours, creating a modern, yet fitting look. Chunky tables with standard chairs and pew seating options fill most of the room, whilst the bar runs along the right hand wall, connecting to the other side of the pub. A mangle, complete with a drinking ledge fixed to the top and boxes filled with books and games beneath, stands opposite the servery and on the back wall there is a brick fireplace with a small iron stove in it. I thought this room was a nice place to enjoy a bite to eat, and we accordingly all picked something from the handwritten menu and found the food was done to a pretty good standard, if a little pricey. A nice covered seating area next to the car park gives punters an al fresco option and includes seats made from hay bales draped with rugs. The pub sign outside indicates that this is a Morland pub and two of their ales – Old Golden Hen and Original – were available at the bar. The Hen was in reasonably good shape and served by one of the friendly and helpful team of young staff who were very good with the various children in the pub, providing them with colouring pens and other such distractions that ensured they generally went unnoticed. This is a nice enough pub and certainly worth a look if you need a bite to eat, but I couldn’t really warm to it as somewhere to enjoy a few drinks and would be inclined to try somewhere different were I in the vicinity again.