The joys of an English beer garden – and my pick of the very best

Telegraph

18 hours ago

On a recent Friday afternoon, the garden at Tuckers Grave, a legendary cider-focused pub in Somerset, was abuzz with human activity – and canine activity, too.
A spaniel was loudly insistent that he should meet a nearby Alsatian; happily, his human companions quickly acquiesced. Before long they were chatting to the Alsatian's owners, too.
When the sun shines, the action at England's best pubs moves outdoors. Not all of them have a garden, but those that do have made very good use of them recently.
I spent the period from March to June touring the country, conducting last-minute research for my guide to England's 500 best pubs. The weather was superb, more often than not.
Pub gardens from Newcastle to Zennor in Cornwall resounded to the hubbub of happy drinkers.
There was the Bridge Inn in Topsham, where cyclists queued at a hatch for beer and sandwiches before taking a seat with a view of the delightful Clyst river; more cyclists at the Plasterers Arms in Hoylake, first to the bar when it opened at 12pm before claiming a spot in the sun outside; exuberant Geordie youth at the Free Trade Inn in Newcastle, enjoying the last rays of a glorious April weekend overlooking the Tyne; and dozens of drinkers in the garden at the Fleece, Bretforton, where the grassy outdoor space stretches endlessly away into the distance.
Some outdoor spaces reflect their locality in an uncanny fashion.
I'm thinking of the large yard at The Barrels in Hereford, packed with young and old on an overcast Saturday evening, more like a town square than a pub garden; or the hillside garden at The Fox and Goose in charming, quirky Hebden Bridge, accessed via a staircase inside the pub.
This languid space, pockmarked with flora and patios, stretches far up the adjoining hill. When I visited recently I watched a man climb up and up, until finally he found a spot in the sunshine.
A modern phenomenon – with German roots
These gardens seem quintessentially English, but they haven't always played such a key role in our pub culture. They enjoyed a boost between the wars, when middle-class disapproval led to the phenomenon of the 'Improved Pub', which aimed to do away with the gin-drenched excesses of Victorian England (there was a renewed campaign in the Sixties and Seventies, too, driven in part by brewery-run competitions to find the prettiest gardens).
At pubs like the now demolished Downham Tavern in South London, opened in 1930, family-friendly gardens formed a key part of the battle against overindulgence.
This Presbyterian instinct has nothing to do with Bavaria, where beer comes second only to God, but the term 'beer garden' surely does.
It is a direct steal from the German biergarten, and the tradition of drinking outside has deeper roots there, too. There are few pleasures in life greater than settling in under a chestnut tree at a Bavarian biergarten on a warm day.
Many of the best examples are in Franconia, Bavaria's northern third, although my favourite is in Austria: the Augustiner Braustübl in Salzburg.
England's beer gardens are a bit different from their Germanic cousins, though. They're less well organised, for a start, a rather on-the-nose reflection of our divergent national characters.
The best often have a slightly ramshackle feel, with mismatched tables here and there, both in and out of the sunshine; people stand, pints in hand or perched precariously on window sills and walls. They can be chaotic, uproarious, a vision of Hogarthian excess – although in that regard, at least, there's a definite kinship with Munich's classic biergarten.
They're lovely when quiet, too. One of the great joys is arriving on a warm afternoon to discover you have a magnificent beer garden all to yourself. This happened to me at the Ypres Castle in Rye, where the garden sits beneath Rye Castle and looks out across Romney Marsh.
In that respect it's like many of the best beer gardens: comfortable and bucolic, with plenty of space and a marvellous view over the English landscape. You might get a wasp in your beer, but it doesn't seem so bad if you've got something nice to look at.
By and large, I think, the best beer gardens are in the countryside – but they're no more cherished than those in our cities. The tables outside the Lord Clyde in Borough, for example, are nothing to write home about, but with the pub's gorgeous tiled exterior looming over them, they fill up fast at the end of the working day. I've found myself here on more than a few occasions.
Many of us, I'm sure, had our first pub experience in a garden somewhere, enjoying a glass of pop and a packet of crisps.
Perhaps that's why we enjoy them so much, or perhaps it's because, as on that sunny afternoon at Tucker's Grave, they often show us at our relaxed, sociable best – dogs as well as humans.