The Rose & Crown

drjohnson

English experience 23rd August 2008

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This is an ideal pub. Half a mile north of the city center, it’s only 140 years old, but the three small, wood-paneled rooms and the affable, eloquent host make it a home away from home. It also keeps the best pint of Old Hooky in town. Brewed about 20 miles away at Hook Norton, said to be the country’s last “steam brewery” (i.e., very old-fashioned), it’s a legend in the annals of real ale, a vessel of hazel clarity, redolent of harvest stubble lit by an evening sun, of woods drenched in rain, of dewy meadows at dawn, of cattle in dells, of Thomas Hardy and sandy-gray churches nestled in the nook of sheep-studded hills. If this isn’t the drinkable essence of England, nothing is.