CityLife

Sutton Hall

IT’S an episode of Midsomer Murders. No one’s died yet. This is posh pub territory where clipped folk surrounded by much oak agonise over specials of the day.

I’m just wondering if that really is Lord Lucan, suspiciously clean shaven, in the mullioned corner cradling a pint of Thwaites.
 

Outside the sun dapples a beer garden that is more well-groomed National Trust sward than the usual butt-littered smoketrap behind most Macc pubs.
 

Sutton Hall on a spring Saturday lunchtime came as such a surprise.
 

Charge of the Light Brigade

The baronial building, a private hotel until recently, dates back to the 16th century, but before that it was a homelier manor house.

It was owned by Ralph Holinshed, the royalist historian whose Chronicles provided raw, if loose, material for Shakespeare’s history plays.
 

Later it was home for Lord Cardigan, of Crimean War fame (Balaclava spawned both the troops’ woollen ear-warmer and the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade).
 

A descendant was Lord Lucan, who so mysteriously disappeared following the death of the family nanny in Chelsea two decades ago.

Hampton Court

We loved the history but were curious to see what a million plus makeover had done for the place last summer and why the Good Pub Guide 2009 could include it as a recommendation before its refurb was complete.
 

This is on the strength of it being owned by Brunning and Price, whose dozen pubs dominate the Guide’s Cheshire entries.
 

I thought this chancy, but the excellence of the venue won me over. Inside it feels like Hampton Court, a maze of rooms with dining to the fore. Starters, light bites, mains were all quality pub food, no more, and that’s fine by me at affordable prices.

My friend Liz started with potted salt fish with crisp poached egg and chorizo salad (£4.95), while I spent £7.95 on a salad tangle involving pigeon breast, black pudding and roast squash with a pear and pickled walnut dressing.
 

Gorgeously melting

This was a meal in itself but the sheer Tudorness of the place encouraged me to foray into a main of slow-roasted, gorgeously melting, belly pork (£11.50). Sage and onion gravy was unctuously appley, smothering the parsnip mash.

Liz felt her smoked haddock and salmon fishcakes, for £8.95, were a touch rusky and I concurred.
 

The wine list is cannily chosen and well-priced. We shared a frisky white Pinoul de Pinet from France’s Languedoc coast for £18.95 after I had essayed a pint of Red Mist from Macc brewery Storm.

Alas, it was sour and weary and I left half of it.

Lord Lucan

Perhaps I should have gone for an alternative from Thwaites, Caines, Wadworth or Weetwood cask beers on draught.

These are chosen by Steve Hobman, a north west-based beer writer, who really knows his stuff.
 

A bit like Brunning and Price on this evidence. Now, was that really Lord Lucan, who pulled out of the car park ahead of us in his Jag?
Neil Sowerby

Sutton Hall, Bullocks Lane, Sutton, Macclesfield SK11 0HE (01260 253 211).

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