The White Bear, Warlingham

This is a very pleasant traditional rural pub with a nicely preserved multiple-room layout, hidden away in the hamlet of Fickleshole. The bar is in the pub’s central room, where limited tables and chairs opposite the servery and further along in a corridor-like space, offer drinkers a decent spot away from some of the pub’s more food-oriented rooms. The servery has a nice dark wood counter and a matching bar back that looked like a modern replacement to me. From the bar, a door leads through to a room opposite which has plenty of tables and chairs set-up in a nice space with whitewashed walls and dark wood beams plus plenty of typical rural pub décor including old paintings, hardback books, lanterns and numerous horse brasses, most evident around the fine inglenook fireplace that dominates the end wall. From here, you can move through to a similar room at the far end of the building, where two rows of bench and chair seating run along the front and back walls towards another inglenook fireplace, with much the same décor as in the previous room. Unusually, there is a tiny snug recessed into the front wall which fits one small table. The right-hand side of the pub is split into a few more similarly styled rooms with plenty of homely décor and furnishings, all of which appeared to be full with diners on our Friday evening visit. There were two Brakspear ales available on cask, one of which was Oxford Gold poured straight from the barrel, although I failed to note what the other option was or whether it was also available on gravity. The Oxford Gold was in fantastic shape and the food we tried here was also of a very high quality, perhaps explaining why the place was packed out. The staff also deserve a mention, as they were super-friendly throughout our stay and nothing seemed to be too much trouble for them. I really liked this place and was pleased we decided to give it a try when looking for somewhere to enjoy a meal out. The service and beer both come highly recommended and perhaps my main reservation with the place is that it is so food-orientated that it perhaps runs the risk of alienating anyone wanting to visit just for a drink.