Long live the sporting pub

Not just a place to drink, the right kind of country pub is a beacon for fieldsports enthusiasts. The Star Inn in Harome is one such spot

- Adrian Dangar

THE REVERED establishments where we love to gather and celebrate long days in the field appear to be joining red-list species with an uncertain future. But the great British pub faces a different kind of threat to curlews and lapwings: rocketing energy and food prices, spiralling living costs, staff shortages, the after-effects of COVID-19 and a shift in the nation’s drinking habits are all cited as reasons for the loss of 383 pubs during the first six months of last year.

If that sounds like a lot of boozers down the swanny, 13,000 pub closures since the millennium year – representing a quarter of all British pubs – makes for sober reading indeed, and bad news for those four out of five people who have lost a pub within five miles of their home this century.

Apart from a brief spell in the 1990s, successive residents of the bucolic and off-grid village of Harome in rural North Yorkshire have never known life without a pub of their own. The Star Inn’s distinctive low-thatched roof greets visitors approaching the village from the market town of Helmsley, just as the Board Inn (as it was known until 1891) provided sustenance to monks travelling between the abbeys of Byland, Rievaulx and Whitby.