The Blue Ship, Billingshurst

I’m surprised to find that I’m the first person to review this classic former King & Barnes pub, although it’s relatively remote location in a very easy to miss hamlet may explain this. On arrival, you’re met with the sight of a fine facade that’s all red brick and hanging tiles, with a somewhat unkempt (in winter) front garden that includes a couple of picnic benches in front of the small layby car park. You enter through a highly unpromising door with an old-fashioned latch handle, into the front bar - one of four separate rooms throughout the pub. This is a particularly impressive space, with an aged, wonky brick floor, whitewashed brick walls and plenty of dark beams across the ceiling. To the right there is a large inglenook fireplace with a smaller fireplace cut into the chimney stack, into which a stove has been squeezed, which was lit and helped provide a nice warm and cosy feel in the room. Hard bench seating around the perimeter serves four tables of various sizes, supported by a few backless benches. To the rear, a serving hatch with a push bell for drawing attention to yourself, acts as a serving area in lieu of a proper bar, and a quick peek through the hatch reveals casks racked up to one side of the serving area, with a few keg taps and shelving further to the rear. Decor is suitably traditional and includes vases in the front windows, earthenware bottles on the mantelpiece and a few enamel Hall & Woodhouse signs here and there along with blackboards listing the day’s specials. A flagstone floor passageway leads into a front left room, formerly part of the living quarters, but now acting as a dining room, having been incorporated into the pub in the 1970’s. This room has been modernised somewhat and now has bare floorboards, grey painted walls with matching low wood panels, and a compact fireplace on the end wall. Simple table and chair arrangements make this ideal for dining, but a lack of soft furnishings meant that there was a lot of echo and noise coming from the room, from just a modest crowd. A few pictures, mainly themed around nature, line the walls, but compared to the front bar, it’s a little underwhelming and a sad example of a refurbishment robbing a pub of much of its character. A passage between the two front rooms leads back to two corresponding rear rooms, one of which you can catch a glimpse of through the serving hatch, but sadly the passageway had been screened off, so I was unable to explore properly. There was just the one cask ale available when I visited - Badger Thirsty Ferret - which the friendly barmaid poured straight from the barrel and was in very good shape. The pub has a good reputation for its food and everyone else seemed to be eating on my Saturday lunchtime visit. This is an amazing old pub that feels like it’s on the verge of losing what makes it special, having to cater instead to diners as opposed to a loyal band of locals. The updating of the front left room paints a grim picture of what could be in store for the entire pub and were this to happen, we would have lost one of the country’s great rural pub interiors. I hope they can resist the urge to update the remaining rooms - visit this wonderful, evocative pub before it’s too late.

Official site of The Blue Ship - www.theblueship.co.uk

Official site of The Blue Ship - www.theblueship.co.uk