Monday, February 22, 2010

The Sun Inn, Leintwardine

The website for Hobsons, the brewers from Cleobury Mortimer, has an article on the Sun Inn in Leintwardine.

This historic "parlour pub" was kept by the country's longest-serving landlady, Flossie Lane, until she died last June at the age of 94. It now has new owners who are committed to running it as "a kind of living museum where good beers can be enjoyed in a historic environment."

The Hobsons page has a BBC video about the Sun Inn which starts playing as soon as you land there. You can find it if you scroll down to the bottom.

Leintwardine? Malcolm Saville writes in his foreword to The Secret of the Gorge:

On the borders of the counties of Shropshire and Hereford, where the river Teme is joined by its tributary the Clun, you may find the village of Leintwardine. It is not very easy to discover although it lies on a road along which the Roman legions once marched, but it is worth it when you get there.

A few miles from the village the lovely river runs unexpectedly into a limestone gorge overshadowed by trees and strong-smelling elders, thick with creamy blossom in the summer, and heavy with purple fruit a few months later.

Through this gorge the river runs smooth, fast and deep for half a mile until it swirls under an old bow bridge. If you can find the gorge, be careful how you cross this bridge, for it was in very bad condition when I was last there and saw the sparklilng water through holes in the rotting timber.

I have been to Leintwardine, though not the gorge. Reading that, and reading about the Sun Inn, I want to go back there.

The picture above comes from the new website of the Sun Inn.

1 comment:

Niles said...

Flossie featured on BBC Radio 4's "Last Word" - this edition - which you can still hear on the internet.

I distinctly remember it because it was broadcast on a day I was heading out camping; but instead of being in a wonderful breazy field, I was stuck in traffic on a motorway near Birmingham.