Engaging manor

9:18am Tuesday 15th July 2008

It's a sad fact that over 1,000 pubs closed last year, but one establishment bucking the trend is the Manor House near Consett.

SCHADENFREUDE is a rather neat German word meaning "pleasure at another's misfortune". The Brits have not only taken to it, but adopted it like a son.

Originally there may have been something of "malicious enjoyment"

about it, a sentiment most recently to the fore when Spain won the European Nations Cup.

Latterly, however, schadenfreude has come simply to mean "relief" at others' tough luck, and there's no better example than the classified death notices, the North-East's first choice reading.

"I looked at the paper," folk say, "saw I wasn't in there and so thought I'd better get up."

Even that, a lighter schadenfreude, is in danger of being overtaken by the classified bankruptcies, described as public notices in the same way that a good gibbeting was considered public entertainment, too.

It's a lugubrious litany which threatens to boost advertising revenue and overflow the page. On the same day last week another four licensees - some of them from once-thriving houses - were thus hung out to cry.

Others still make good their escape in the middle of the night, a case of flit or bust.

More than 1,000 pubs closed permanently last year. Accountancy company Price Waterhouse Cooper estimates that this year it will be 2,000, another 4,000 by the year 2012.

Yet otherwise sane people still continue to dream of running their own bar, beguiled by Smooth talking pubcos and by a dream that can swiftly become a nightmare. Even on the A68, en route to the Manor House Inn at Carterway Heads, three or four places innocently displayed the "under new management" banner.

It's a statement epitomising hope over reality, a mirage that the Kings Head's new clothes may actually be real. Though clearly there are exceptions, it is a euphemism meaning that the person within has temporarily taken leave of his senses.

The Manor House is under new ownership, too, though with a promising enough start to prompt an "I don't usually write to newspapers" email from Brian Waller. "A really extensive choice of excellent food and four superb hand-pulled beers," he wrote (though he did spot an errant apostrophe).

Formerly a firm Good Pub Guide favourite, the pub - three miles north of Castleside, on the main road - was taken over three months ago by Neil Oxley, originally from Consett, and his wife Emma.

Neil had spent 22 years in the motor trade in the Middle East, came home to be closer to his parents, looked around and found the Manor on the market. "I think we're in danger of talking ourselves into recession," he insists.

"If anything, business is up since we came here. We're very happy with what's happening."

We went two Saturday afternoons back, the sky quarry grey, the rain pouring, the sheep out the back looking damn-near suicidal. Muggleswick, the village a couple of miles along the back road, was holding its annual fair, with strawberries. A pity about that, too.

Emphasis throughout is on local produce, so that three of the four real ales - Wylam, Consett and the Hope House Brewery near Matfen, Northumberland - were from within ten miles. Castle Eden, the long distance traveller, is from Cameron's in Hartlepool.

The trout is from Derwent Reservoir, a mile out the back, delivered (says Neil) within ten minutes of one of the locals pulling it out of the water.

Rabbits and squirrels are also caught locally and are said to be "wild" - as well, one supposes, they might have been. The kippers - they like their kippers - are Manx, though.

The menu begins with sandwiches, wraps and burgers - cooked to individual taste - and includes a children's section of which the Boss fully approved.

Broadly it was smaller portions of other dishes and not just a fish finger gesture.

We ate in the lounge. In the adjoining "canine friendly" bar - is that wise? - the preliminaries for the British Grand Prix were warming up noisily and ineluctably. That emphatically isn't wise, though later they appeared to put the suppressors on Mr Hamilton and Co.

Though service was cheerfully raw, the food - large quantities of good, imaginative, pub food - was cooked very well.

The Boss began with scallops, one of many dishes available as starter or main course. She followed with the trout, which might have swum up the road from Derwent, so great the continuing downpour.

The fish came not as in out-of-water but in a tower, with rosemary and parsley butter. It reminded her of a place she'd passed a few days earlier in Durham, offering a 12-inch tower of onion rings.

Goodness only knows how she kept on walking. The lady's willpower is clearly greater than we had supposed.

I'd begun with mushrooms in the sauce of the day, a mild but adroitly blended and copiously served garlic and blue cheese. Plenty of bread fuelled the mopping up operation which followed.

The rabbit, richly flavoured, came with tagliatelli and a mushroom and tarragon sauce, into which little bits of cauliflower appeared to have strayed.

It was very enjoyable. A single dessert, cinnamon and lemon rice pudding, proved rather heavier going.

Such had been the enthusiasm of Mr Waller's recommendation that we tried three of the four ales (and not, whisper it, in half-measures, either.) Each was excellent, impeccably kept, reason alone for taking a trip up the A68 (and finding a driver to furnish it).

It was a lunch to cheer a thoroughly gloomy day. The new people seem to be managing very well.

■ The Manor House Inn, Carterway Heads, near Consett. Open seven days; no problem for the disabled.

01207-255268.

THE Bridgewater Arms at Winston, between Darlington and Barnard Castle, is another place that's had its ups and downs of late. Today, however, it reopens under the guidance of Paul Grundy, former head chef at the celebrated Black Bull at Moulton. Though the pub's in the old village school, Paul promises "modern British cooking"

with an emphasis on seafood and a tip-top wine list. More shortly.

EDWARD Boynton rings, too.

Long at the acclaimed Nags Head in Pickhill - just off the A1 near Thirsk - he recalls tough times from the 1970s onwards but fears this may be the hardest shift of all.

What the lad really wants folk to know is that there are four MT 4x4 tyres piled up for sale in his reception.

He'd had them fitted on his Range Rover in Ripon, travelled six miles, decided they weren't for him - "too heavy" - and went back and changed them.

"People can hardly believe their eyes," he says. Like everything else, of course, the tyres are subject to inflation.

THE Cleveland Hotel in Coatham, Redcar, has become the region's latest brew pub. Chris Appleby's Redscar Brewery in the cellar presently producing Redscar Rocks, a 4.5abv bitter, and Redscar Sands, a 4.2 pale ale. They had the Rocks - "made using only superior, additive-free ingredients," it says - at the Quaker Coffee House in Darlington. It was very pleasant indeed.

and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what croaks when it's misty.

A frog horn, of course.