Tall stories, a sausage competition and excellent beer: Why our pub is the best in Britain

There is an ancient-looking swear box at the Three Kings Inn on the village green in Hanley Castle, near Worcester, fashioned by “Tall Pete” and polished by time. If you dare request a lager, cough up (the landlady, Sue Roberts, won’t sell the stuff – it is strictly real ales here). Same goes if your phone peeps. “There are rules,” explains “John the Pun”, a fourth-generation regular in a jaunty beret, so known for his knack with words.

Thankfully, there is also plenty you can do here that doesn’t cost. Pun – John Bradshaw, 78 – launched Interesting Tuesdays, weekly talks by regulars; a lightbulb moment that pinged over an interesting chat at the bar about titanium. You get chatting more widely when there are no phones to distract you, I’m assured. Clearly. Subjects range from the Battle of Tabaruzaka to My Chernobyl Experience and Winnie-the-Pooh. “It gets packed,” he says.

He also praises Live Music Sundays, encompassing everything from folk to Spanish guitar, and now extending to Fridays and “every other Thursday”. Otherwise, the pub has no sound system. “People come from far and wide. ‘Andy the Font’ comes 30 miles…” he muses. Not to mention “Mark the Arch” and “Fibreglass Mark”. I’m past asking for explanations… If the sign of an excellent pub is everyone knowing your name, the Three Kings goes the extra mile. Nicknames flow faster than ale.

This historic pub, wrapped in black and white timber thought to date from 1500, is one of five across Britain named winners of a Telegraph competitionto find our nation’s finest. Part of our Save Our Pubs campaign, we appealed for punters to nominate their favourites. Regular Richard Weatherill sent in the nomination praising the plethora of activities and events the pub organises. “The pub is central to village life,” he said. “Oh, and the beer’s extremely good too!”

Within minutes of arriving here on a Thursday lunchtime, it quickly becomes apparent why the Three Kings made the chalkboard. Familiarity and community are its foundation, as load-bearing as its cruck beams. They have held it steady as an average of four pubs a day have closed this year, grappling with high taxes, National Insurance rises and soaring energy costs. Our five winners have won a £5,000 drinks tab for patrons to enjoy on National Pub Day on Saturday, May 16.

“Young Will” – William Davies, a chef, and actually 52 – picks up the thread. “Petrol Pete” is reigning champion of the sloe gin competition, he explains (“It revs him up,” jokes Pun), while the pub’s chilli-making competition, its annual beer festival (31 and counting), and the church versus pub cricket match are personal favourites. He’s been supping here since he turned 18. While for “Ollie” – real name Tony Chadd, 66 – it’s the pub’s choir and book club. No one remembers why he’s called Ollie.

“There is no other place like this,” says retiree John Thorley, 86, a regular of 40 years. Could he put his finger on why? He worries that might mess with the alchemy, but tries. “It’s friendly, it’s unassuming, it greets you like no one else does,” he attempts. Everyone mixes, from farmers to GPs. “Even if you don’t know people, you end up talking to them,” Ollie chimes.

Paul Morton, 56, his partner, Charlotte Alcock, 52, and her daughter Jolie Webb, 23, would agree. They are the only non-regulars here today, on a day trip from Bromsgrove. First-timers, they look a little rabbit-in-the-headlights initially, but now smile broadly. No cliquishness here, they assure me. “I don’t often drink in pubs,” admits Webb, echoing the trend of her generation. “You can’t properly relax in a Wetherspoons, but this feels like a private space. It’s cluttered, but cosy.”

That clutter is museum-worthy. Roberts, 62, thinks that the building has operated as a pub since at least 1840. Her grandparents, Fred and Ethel, took the lease from the local estate in 1911, followed by her parents, and 20 years ago, herself – although she has always worked here, with the family living upstairs. “So things just accumulate,” she explains.

By “things” she refers to Great War shell cases along the inglenook mantle next to copper plates and horse brasses that have never moved in her memory; a taxidermy fox and owl “given by a morris dancer”; a Victorian vacuum cleaner. Oh, and a wig form, snug on a hatstand. “It was found when we removed a Victorian grate,” she explains. Someone said it belonged to a judge, but then tall stories clutter this place, too. Roberts concedes that punters still talk about the “badger ham sandwiches” her dad handed round 50 years ago.

The bar in the left half of the building is listed on the National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors. It remains tiny, just three tables and a settle. The serving hatch is tiny, too, behind which 1950s beer pumps are still used. “Part of the appeal is it does not change,” she says. It was “only” 45 years ago that next door was transformed into a second, larger, bar. It has not been redecorated since. In keeping with her time capsule, Roberts only takes cash.

Clearly, the ale here is a draw. Roberts rotates them; three and a “pudding” (stout or porter) daily, earning her plaudits from the Campaign for Real Ale. A “ticker” called Bob drops in – so-called for his hobby ticking off real ales. He’s sampled 19,000; some 300-400 here. “The beer is excellent,” he confirms. The prices, too – £3.60 a pint, up from a long-standing £3 two years ago. The pale ale is always nicknamed “Sue knows”, although how she does is extraordinary. She has always been teetotal. “Just tea,” she grins.

When it comes to the pub’s secret sauce, the regulars keep returning to Roberts. In a dark jumper, jeans and flat lace-ups, she’s a no-frills Bet Lynch antithesis, camouflaged in the bar’s wood-smoky shadows. Yet, “she’s special, you come through the door and there’s a pint in your hand, she knows what you want,” Thorley says. Helen Owens, 64, explains that being a landlady is Roberts’s “vocation”, “a way of life”.

“I never wanted to do anything else,” Roberts admits – even though, a regular whispers, she holds a first-class degree in maths. “Why would I want to go anywhere else when all these interesting people come and see me?” Her trick is to simply accommodate them. “They instigate things. I see my job as trying to facilitate, there’s no point trying to manage them!” Retiree Steve Gogerty, 67, agrees wholeheartedly. “Someone once said ‘wouldn’t it be nice to have a sausage competition?’ and we had one,” he recalls fondly.

Yet none of these enterprises directly earn the pub a profit. Sue donates heavily to Acorns Children’s Hospice, and not just from the swear box. Nearly £60,000 to date. Meanwhile, she stubbornly keeps prices low and has no desire to sell food. She admits that in another circumstance she would “definitely struggle to carry on”. She pays a very manageable rent and benefits from “rural relief” on rates, largely staffing the pub alone. Is she profitable? “I make some,” she says. “I’m still living!” But she agrees that costs have spiralled. “Pubs obviously need help,” she nods.

She will never leave. Of the future after her, she’s more uncertain, but she remains buoyed by the young families who come on Sundays. She serves more non-alcoholic drinks, but as for widespread Gen Z teetotalism, “I think some of them are bucking that trend!” she laughs. As “Young Will” says: “There are younger Wills, in fact.”

“Life” here, he adds, still “revolves around the pub”.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]