The Crown, Arford: ‘Everything one might want'

The Guardian

23-03-2025

The Crown, Arford Road, Headley, Bordon GU35 8BT (01428 288090; thecrownarford.com). Small plates from £4.50; large plates £18-£29; desserts £9; and wines from £36
I feel I shouldn't be writing at all because I am so full and so happy. I have just had the meal of meals – a Sunday lunch of such perfection that really my next move should have been to lie down. I live in an ancient part of Britain, where once upon a time if you wanted to pick sides, it was between Wessex and Mercia. Of course, in the ninth century the pesky Vikings turned up and imposed Danelaw. Being Danish myself I now realise that the locals missed a trick in defending themselves. Instead of battling or giving in they should simply have served the naughty Norsemen a perfect plate of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, carrots, parsnips, buttered greens and gravy and the invading hordes would have been putty in their hands.
Sunday lunch is such a British institution it's hard to know when it started. Possibly in medieval times, but that's between the 5th and the 15th century, which doesn't really narrow things down. The theory is that back in the day, village serfs (the poor) worked for the squire (the rich) six days a week. Sunday morning was for church after which the serfs would get together to practise, I don't know, anti-Viking bow-and-arrow techniques, and their boss would reward them with a feast of oxen roasted on a spit.
What I take from all this is that ideally you should work hard for your lunch. My wife, Debbie, and I are in the process of restoring 40 acres of ancient woodland. We do this on a Sunday morning with a glorious assortment of volunteers. Together we clear the land around gnarled, coppiced beech trees and venerable oaks, bringing sunshine back down on to the forest floor. It is our church, after which we all are ravenous. As we have no squire to conjure a feast and there is no immediate threat of invasion, this week we determined to finish the day at a pub a few miles down the road.
With sawdust in every crevice, 10 of us went off to the Crown in the small Hampshire village of Arford. I tell you the name of the village because the pub name doesn't really help by itself. There are more than 1,000 inns and public houses in the UK called the Crown because they were once located on Crown lands and the British are nothing if not clear-minded about such things. (I mean, not always. I used to drink in an inner-city pub in London called Harbour Lights whose naming no one ever understood.)
Since somewhere deep in the late-17th century there has been a beer house and inn standing in the centre of Arford and you can still step in straight off the village lane into the oldest part of the building. A wide, black-beamed fireplace hosts a roaring log burner and we were all childishly pleased to see stacked logs that had come courtesy of our own woodland work. Our coppicing gang entirely filled the seats at a table beneath 200-year-old wooden beams, while down in the bar extension the place was full. We bumped into a friend just finishing her meal. She teaches cooking at the Gordon Ramsay school and waxed lyrical about the lunch ahead.
When it comes to Sunday lunch, I feel there is a certain sacredness about it which no one should really mess with. You want a big plate of juicy meat, properly cooked potatoes with no stinting on the gravy, a Yorkshire pudding that has never touched a freezer and the odd veg to feel as though you are doing yourself a bit of good. The menu boded well: no one trying to sell us a 'foam' or a 'jus' of anything. The mains were listed sensibly: beef, chicken, pork, nut roast. Everything one might want.
We all know each other well now and the chatter was lively with much laughter, but as the food was served a hush fell over the table. On the whole, Debbie and I dislike the modern penchant for endlessly photographing one's dinner, but I saw her whip out her phone and take a shot. This was Sunday lunch perfection. The juiciest of beef. Large slices. Rare in the middle. A small pillow of Yorkshire pudding. Roast potatoes as they should be, crisp on the outside, soft on the inside. A whole carrot, a whole parsnip, extra bowls of creamy cauliflower cheese and deep red cabbage. Buttered greens and extra jugs of gravy. A whole half of a succulent chicken lay on Deb's plate while in the corner where our Swedish woodcutter sat, all I could hear was the happy snap of pork crackling in his mouth.
The servings were vast. Surely none of us would ever eat again? But then there was pudding – sticky toffee, chocolate brownie, pecan pie and ice-cream, tiramisu, apple and sultana crumble with custard. Somehow we soldiered on. We nattered away, men and women from many walks of life united in giving nature a hand. I realised we have been together as a team for quite some time. We spoke of individual trees as if they are our friends and I wondered if the medieval lunch mob might have had much the same conversation. All morning and all through lunch not one of us looked at our phone. We were filthy, but we were free.
The Crown is not a large place. It has a small kitchen run single-handedly by a remarkable woman called Stella Malone. We asked if she would come and take our thanks. She did, but shyly, then escaped away. There is great skill in producing this most traditional of meals to such a standard. I expect Michelin or whoever rates these things would never even glance this way, but she is an artist.
We need to support these small country inns and local watering holes. The number of pubs in England and Wales is at a record low. Last year more than 400 closed and there had been some danger of Arford's own public house closing after two centuries of service. It would have been terrible. It is a beating heart for the locals but, rather like our woodland, the village was galvanised into action. Since July 2024, the Crown has been taken over by a few locals who set up a limited company to manage the place which is now enthusiastically supported by the whole community. Lively, local and lovely. I need to lie down to make room for the next time.