HUTTON Magna's between Barnard Castle and Richmond, on the civilised side of the county boundary. There probably aren't more than two dozen houses, a war memorial and a cottagey pub, called the Oak Tree. If this is Hutton Magna, heaven help Hutton Parva.

It may not be said to be a giant Oak Tree, either, in truth little more than a sapling, but it's stood 150 years or more and in the last 30 alone seen an awful lot of incident.

Much of it involved the column's old friend Doreen Readshaw who during her 11-year tenure suspended hundreds of chamber pots (usually empty) from the ceiling, watered the whisky (fined £100), opened all hours (fined £10) and, memory suggests, had a bit of an accommodation with the local vicar's lad, an' all. "He slept on the tap room bench," she insisted.

Other tenants came, went or were ignominiously ejected. Mrs Murgatroyd Agatha Bedford, known universally and to her great relief as Mac - she was Clapperton before marriage - bought it three years ago and has made a distinctive and a delightful impression.

"I wanted something small enough to run on my own if need be. I'm loving it," she says, though she admits to "a degree of resentment" among locals that on Saturday nights it's almost impossible to stir for diners.

This was a Friday, turned 8.30, optimistically on spec. Only two others were in; welcome warm, food no problem.

It's a single, narrow room, more front parlour than brew-fit boozer, coal fire blazing, slightly lop-sidedly, at one end. The mantlepiece offered copies of the Darlington Drinker and of the Co Durham WEA guide: they're doing shiatsu in Seaham, apparently.

There's a big leather settee, a proper pub settle, idiosyncratically assorted tables, horse racing prints and posters from around the world. Mac's former husband was a racing man, her daughter's a jockey in Malaysia.

What there appeared not to be were darts, dominoes and others totems of village pub life. Precious few villagers either, come to that. The darts team left 18 months ago, says Mac, though she'd welcome them back - "I really don't want it just to be a restaurant".

Food - Magna carta, as it were - is mainly chalked up around the bar. Mac ran shooting lodges in the north of Scotland, envied the chefs, withstood the heat when on their days off they got out of the kitchen.

Now she does almost everything herself. The chap in the butcher pinny proved to be Tony Clark, a well known artist from Whorlton - down the road - who adds a little this and that to the pot. "He's an absolute godsend," says Mac.

The hour being late and the food manifestly cooked from fresh, we skipped starters. Main courses included duck breast with a honey and lemon sauce, roasted pigeon with a mushroom and something illegible sauce, lots of fish like turbot, red mullet and lemon sole cooked beautifully (said The Boss) in butter. No scampi, no steak pie.

We ordered venison goulash with dumplings, the way that mother really did used to make them. The dish was fragrant - the word Mr Justice Caulfield used of the unfortunate Mrs Archer, if not of venison stew - and exceptionally tasty. Vegetables included perfectly roasted parsnips and some of the best chips in memory.

Puddings, all home-made, might have been chocolate mousse, banoffi pie, sticky toffee or Eton mess - that calorific concoction of strawberries, cream and meringue which we ordered with two spoons.

Around 10.30, another two fellers came in, one of them marking his birthday with champagne and with extra glasses for the couple finishing with coffee and sweeties.

It was the perfect end to a very good evening. Happy birthday David, and deserved success to Mrs Murgatroyd Agatha Bedford.

TWO or three days before the Castle Eden Brewery announced that it was upping and offing down the back road to Hartlepool, we happened to lunch at the Castle Eden Inn. It has illusions of grandeur, too.

Everything is billed "giant", "monster" or in the case of the fish, "great white". The menu's arms' width, the plates "17 inches", feeling the collar size. If they sold elephant, it would be jumbo.

The long and the short, therefore, is that it is the sort of ready-made refectory which snotty-nosed food columnists generally regard as monstrous, or at best as no big deal. In truth, it was surprisingly pleasant.

Most importantly, the Castle Eden Ale was absolutely spot on, the Timothy Taylor Landlord little worse for the journey. Mr Brian Mulligan, in attendance, ordered the salmon and broccoli fishcakes - doubtless caught elsewhere - and found them entirely satisfactory. The vegetables were "disappointing" - that is to say, waterlogged - however.

The "giant" chicken and bacon pie offered genuine Fee-fi-fo-fum and games, the approximate size of an off-side hub cap but probably much more pleasant. It was very good, honest.

Puddings seemed inadvisable, not least the Yorkshire pudding - extra outsize, no doubt - filled with bananas or "fruits of the forest".

Tykes and traditionalists would recoil, as did the Craven Herald in Skipton the other day when discovering Yorkshire pudding filled with Lancashire hot pot.

"Traitor's pie," they called it. The Castle Eden Inn may attract a rather greater loyalty.

AFTER months of maybes, the ever-lengthening J F Wetherspoon pub chain has finally won planning permission to convert the former post office in Richmond. It'll be called the Ralph Fitzrandall, no less, after the 13th Century squire who established the Greyfriars, Richmond's order of monks. Cost £1m, opening date, November.

THE Unicorn in Norton High Street, known much more familiarly as Nellie's, is Cleveland CAMRA's Spring pub of the season - only one real ale, but the Magnet's reckoned a big attraction.

Nellie was a former landlord's wife who took over when he died, apparently, and held the licence another 40 years.

It's also said that the Unicorn retains its status as a coaching inn, meaning that travellers must be given free bread and water on request. None has recently bothered.

ANOTHER award winner, the Daleside Arms at Croxdale - between Durham and Spennymoor - is Durham CAMRA's pub of the year, succeeding wondrous places like the Victoria in Durham and the Grey Horse in Consett.

"I'm honoured to join such company," says landlord Michael Patterson, whose parents had the Black Bull in Ferryhill and the Sportsman in Belmont.

The occasion will be marked with a "cask and curry" night and domino handicap on June 6. More on that one later.

....and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew the sad outcome if you cross a fruit with a vegetable.

A melon-cauli, of course.

Published: Tuesday, May 8, 2001