Something, old something new
Three hundred years ago William of Orange was relaxing, having won a war against Louis XIV of France. Britain and its Grand Alliance partners - Spain, Holland and the Holy Roman Empire - defeated the Sun King in September 1697 and Louis finally recognised William's sovereignty. The victor may then have gone down the pub to celebrate, but he may have been nervous about further Jacobite plots.
If William had walked into the Acorn at Horston Grange, outside Nuneaton in Warwickshire, what would he have made of it? Would he have not batted an eyelid and simply ordered a pint of Heineken? Probably not, but if Quintessential Pub Company boss John Willmott has got it right, the novice king would indeed have recognised the Acorn as a building, and possibly an inn, of that period.
First of eight
The Acorn is Willmott's first "new 300-year-old" pub. If successful, it will be the first of eight or so. The second, the Crown, is already in the pipeline at Powick, near Worcester.
Willmott and his wife Amanda, already owners of two other properties, were looking for suitable old pubs in the right locations to redevelop, but so few were suitable that Amanda was prompted to come up with an idea: "If you can't find them or buy them, build them."
"We wanted to expand and we were trying to find similar pubs," says Willmott, "but either the old pubs we were after were not available or they were in the middle of nowhere." So the couple went to design and construction company Border Oak in Leominster, Hereford and Worcester, and convinced them to turn their skills to the pub trade.
The Acorn cost about £750,000 and took 27 weeks to construct. A concrete base was laid and a timber frame, made from about 100 English oaks, was erected. The frame was then in-filled with a combination of bricks and an ancient mix of lime and local sand - for its distinctive regional colouring. Inside, the beams were hand-polished, flagstones were laid throughout the 2,600sq ft of trading area, and inglenook fireplaces were fitted. There are 120 seats with no formal restaurant area, although the pub does take reservations.
There is no music and no fruit machine, and much of the furniture comprises wooden chairs and tables, some from old churches. The crowning glory of the Acorn is part of the roof, thatched in the traditional centuries-old manner.
With the next in the chain, Willmott reckons they will shave four weeks off the construction time.
Initial sales
At the time of opening, the mix of drink to food, or wet to dry, was 55:45. At the Willmotts' other two pubs, the Bull's Head in Wotton Wawen near Stratford-upon-Avon and the Kings Arms in Ombersley, Worcestershire, the bias is 70% food. "People came to just look and see and have a drink, so initially drink sales were higher," says Willmott. "Nevertheless, more people can walk to the Acorn, so I think the drinks side may remain higher than in the other pubs."
Willmott and the development chef for Quintessential, Nick Walsh, describe the Acorn's food offering as "contemporary English". Walsh elaborates by describing it as "blending English with Mediterranean styles."
Quintessential pubs specialise in fresh fish, which is delivered by Caterfish from the fish market in Birmingham. A blackboard in each pub displays what fresh fish is available every day. Dishes include a salmon and herring recipe, mussels with white wine, and conger eel with fruits of the forest. There is also a seafood platter which costs £38 for two or three people.
The standard menu is changed four times a year. There are eight starters, from home-made soup (£2.95) to fresh tagliatelle with clams and garlic (£5.25). The nine non-fish main courses go from warm baby leek, new potato and avocado salad with truffle oil and crusty bread (£6.95) through sirloin steak with peppercorn butter (£9.75), calves' liver and smoky bacon with bubble and squeak (£9.50), and steak and kidney pie (£7.95) to slow-roasted lamb shank with rosemary, thyme and boulangere potatoes (£8.75) and pancetta-wrapped chicken breasts stuffed with Stilton (£9.25).
New options for the menu come from what the various TV chefs are up to and what they are publishing. Another major source is to go to Marks & Spencer, to see what it is offering the masses. "We go with the flow," said Willmott.
Little touches such as linen napkins, a clean-looking, easy-to-read menu and understated branding betray the Willmotts' histories. Both John and Amanda come from London hotel backgrounds - John was an F&B manager with Strand Hotels then in general management at the Savoy and Park Lane Hotel, Piccadilly, while Amanda was assistant F&B manager at Grosvenor House, Park Lane.
They now have funding to develop the new 300-year-old pub chain from Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries, a brewer not noted for food in its pubs.
The Acorn has three cask ales: Marston's Pedigree, Fuller's London Pride and W&D's Banks' Bitter. There are no keg beers except for Guinness. Once food sales take off, Willmott expects wine sales to increase proportionately - at the Bull's Head and the Kings Arms, wine sales outstrip beer.
Nuneaton is a suburb of Coventry and has a good deal of light industry. The housing is of good quality, mostly modern, with a fair smattering of ABs and two-car families. Competition in the area comes from Harvester, Beefeater, Bass Vintage Inns and lots of small local pubs, but there's not much in the wayof good-quality food, according to Willmott.
Intriguing blip?
He does not believe in advertising his pubs in local papers. He prefers the word-of-mouth approach, hence the initially slow uptake on the food side. Nevertheless, he notes that, in the second week, his Crown Management System, which monitors sales, showed that the Acorn had sold 18 seafood platters as opposed to only four at the Kings Arms, a well-established pub in a more affluent area. Is this an intriguing blip, or the shape of things to come?
What William of Orange would make of Crown Management Systems, let alone "ABs" and two-car families, the Lord only knows. Would he feel more at home in a Beefeater than the Acorn? Well, the Beefeater's uniforms hark back to Tudor times, which is about 200 years before William's era, so, again, who knows? But with William's Dutch ancestry, The Acorn's fish dishes and seafood platter would certainly have found royal favour 300 years ago.
From little acorns, as they say…
