Blaze at historic pub

By Kathryn Smith, North Devon Journal

A MAJOR fire at the historic Hoops Inn at Horns Cross has destroyed part of the 13th century pub.

But owners Dee and Gerry Goodwin say they plan to re-open for business on Monday.

There were 101 firefighters from across three counties fighting the blaze on Monday night.

Chimney sparks had been spotted by a passer by and combined with the high winds, set the thatch alight.

Dee said: “We are absolutely devastated. This is not just our business, it is our home. It may take a while, but we plan for it to be even better.” Gerry added: “Words cannot describe it.”

A handful of guests and staff were evacuated when the fire started around 5pm on Monday. No one was hurt and Gerry said the fire drill worked perfectly. He added: “Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service did a wonderful, awe inspiring, mind blowing job. I have never seen anything like it. They were so professional, and so organised.

“We had spent a lot of the winter refurbishing and spent a lot of money on the pub, particularly in the room that was destroyed. But our basic plan is to open the restaurant and bars and 80% of the bedrooms on Monday.”

Between 40 to 50 bookings had to be cancelled on Tuesday morning, and guests due to stay Monday night had been transferred elsewhere. Gerry said: “We have had amazing support from the guests, staff and neighbours.”

The couple have owned the Hoops Inn, which is listed in the 2009 Michelin Guide to Eating Out in Pubs, for the past five years.

Fourteen fire engines from Devon, Somerset and Cornwall were at the scene, including foam units from Exmouth and Porlock which use a specialist technique to fight thatch fires. It was exactly three months ago that many of those crews were fighting to save the thatched George Hotel in Hatherleigh which was destroyed in a blaze two days before Christmas.

Bideford group commander Pete Newman was leading the Hoops Inn operation. He said: “When we arrived there was a well-developed fire in the thatched roof about a quarter of the way down the roof. We created a fire break halfway down and worked back towards the burning thatch to prevent it spreading. There were also crews inside and we managed to limit the fire damage to 25% of the roof.

“We also managed to move most of the contents out of the rooms to prevent further damage and some valuable furniture was saved.

“About 50% of the main thatched area was untouched, as was most of the pub downstairs. “We were cutting through the thatch, pulling it down and dropping it on the main road or to the back of the building which is quite labour intensive work.”

Mr Newman added: “I was very pleased with the way the operation went. The crews worked very well together and there was good liaison with other services. The initial actions of the fire break saved the rest of the building and thatch.”

While crews battled the Hoops Inn blaze, another 15 pumps were sent to a fire at the former Ambrosia factory in Lapford. Although resources in the area were said to be very stretched, it did not impact on the Hoops Inn operation.

The vexed question of ear-splitting pop music in 1970s-style back street boozers once again demands debate

We had a drink first, my good friend J and I, in The Fountain, a refurbished foodie bar in Trinity Street in the centre of Barnstaple.

We've both got a baby son a piece so we're always at the brittle-sighed point of terrible nervous exhaustion whenever we meet for a pint.

You could store bar snacks, cashew nuts perhaps, in the deep folds under our child-ruined eyeballs. You could hang us upside down by our ankles from a tower block, firing bales of flaming straw at us from medieval catapults, and we would take the opportunity to sleep in our stirrups, not soil in our cords, like cowards.

In fact, we're a bit like swimmers, as, I think, a lot of good-hearted pub fanatics are; like North Devon sea-plungers, we need to ease in to the passtime, to let the sheer saltwater move over our heads and wash away the work, the crying, the dancing chariots of gloom, the ever-howling mangy dogs of death, who stalk our every breath...

But so much for the chuckles; we need to let the soothing wooden cradle of the English pub bring us back to the earth frame of our characters - with love, with beauty, with beer. Shame then that the Fountain felt a bit like a three-star hotel lobby.

Yes, the Guinness (which is £3 a pint in most places now, gods help us all), was good enough. Yes, everything was in order. But it was a bar, not a pub, so I shall reserve further comment for our next engagement, which was at the Corner House, a well-known back street boozer in the centre of Barnstaple. The Corner House has pub DNA running through its wood and bricks and glass in genial torrents; it surely grows its customers like a tree makes its limbs.

It was mid-evening on a Saturday and the place was busily turning, but not overcrowded, with people who knew each other, a sure sign of a proper locals alehouse. As we rested our pints of Tribute (good pint, Tribute, and first brewed to celebrate the 1999 solar eclipse) on a lacquered table from the 1970s, I was transported to a semi-mythical era which ended just before I was born. Could I see men with long hair and flared trousers, smoke-billowing faces, chatting up "dolly birds" by the bar? Was that Rod Stewart on the "jukebox"? Were they strike placards by the door?

No. But I could not escape a, possibly delusional on my part, pleasantly anti-fashion Ted Heath-era vibe at the Corner House. Even one of the bar pumps was surely a little plastic block of nostalgia, not a bit of equipment. Full marks to them too for keeping the grand old ceramic urinals in the gents (a sign the pub's history goes beyond the 1970s). You know they don't make wee-holes like that any more, more's the pity. Ahhh, I thought as I relieved myself in the ample porcelain theatre. Ahhh, the nostalgic thought of trips to the outside bogs at the Bridge Inn in Topsham, with the cool night air birds made strange by a bellyful of Devon ale.

The only downer was the absurdly ear-shattering volume of the pop music (Britney Spears anyone?). Pubs are for conversations or solitary contemplation. Extremely loud recorded music is for discotheques, and discotheques are for dancing.

They still have discotheques, right?

The Corner House, Boutport Street, Barnstaple

ADAM'S ALE RATING: 3 out of 5

DRINK THIS: Tribute (4.2%)

My incantation did not work, and I think I know why.

In September 2008, seven months ago, I blogged a rather tongue-in-cheek "incantation", urging you all to go to the North Country Inn, in Barnstaple town centre. It is probably the town's oldest pub and has (still) not been ruined, as far as I can tell, by redevelopment or fashionable decoration. I really wanted this pub to succeed, to become a much-needed beer-drinking gem; the building and interior are superb, and it has a reasonable location.

I really wanted - want - that pub to succeed, because I can see the potential, but my plea was, in hindsight, somewhat misguided and too optimistic. The North Country Inn, which is owned by Enterprise Inns, one of the giant pubcos who are getting a lot of abuse from MPs, landlords and drinkers, has closed and is up for sale. I don't know who is to blame for the pub closing, but I know why I didn't go there after my last visit.

The second-to-last time I visited the North Country, and I was not a regular, I enjoyed some simple but enjoyable pub grub and a decent pint.  The place seemed friendly, if a little bare and devoid of Proper Local atmosphere, but it had, as I say, potential, not least because of its fabulous wooden windowframes. Well that was then.

The last time I visited, what I took to be the manic desperation of a pub fighting the wrong battle for survival was in evidence: the tacky corporate-style posters in display cases on the wall outside the front door, advertising wares as if the pub was a branch of McDonald's not one of North Devon's most historic inns, and the skull-splittingly loud pop music both indicated to me that this place had missed a trick and was doomed. At the bar, things were worse.

A handful of drinkers, most of whom had yet to see their 21st birthday, I guessed, stood with the unrelaxed demeanour of teenagers everywhere, occasionally shouting chunks of "conversation" above the tinny house music; I actually felt a bit sorry for them; it was hardly a carefree vibe. The barmaid was very friendly, but told me there was no real beer, only lager and Guinness. I ordered a pint of the latter, and the poor girl had no idea how to pour it.

I took my badly-poured pint to the unsurprisingly-empty front section of the pub, and hunkered down beneath the occasional teenage shouts and techno. I went in to a damage-limitation reverie and thought of a bustling, but unmaniac, town centre local, with a row of glorious well-kept local ales on offer, a careful and knowledgeable landlord or landlady busy behind the bar, groups of friends enjoying animated conversations at tables, maybe an old man reading the cricket scores at the bar, a game of darts in one corner, a round of cards in another corner, and all among us the unspoken sense that character and community are better friends than corporations and spreadsheets, and the enlivening feeling of useful escape from work and duty.

I drank my pint as quickly as I could and escaped in to the dank night, keeping my remaining beer cash for another day.

I am a passionate pub lover and I say this with no satisfaction: the deadwood in our pub trade is being felled.