A Night Away: the Bear Inn at Hodnet – Shropshire storytelling in sumptuous comfort

There is something almost otherworldly about Shropshire. It’s not so much the land that time forgot (a whizz around the buzzy streets of Shrewsbury will show as much), but it does have a hazy hanging-in-the-amber unhurriedness to it – a sense certainly heightened on a hot May’s evening, when shadows of hedgerows, blowsy with cow parsley, stretch long across the empty roads. This is a county of enchanting contradictions: it’s the birthplace of modern industry (and boasts the ‘grandfather’ of skyscrapers, Ditherington flax mill), yet has no cities and is something of a rural idyll; is full of history and yet is a hotbed for the modern slow food movement.

The Bear Inn, found in the sleepy village of Hodnet, fits into this almost mythological mould rather well. Many years ago, for instance, a couple named Madge and Bib lived at the pub. Tall, shaggy-haired brunettes, they weren’t the publicans, per se, but they certainly knew how to pull a crowd for a pint…

Looking back today, it’s rather shocking (and sad) that two actual grizzly bears could be found in such a place, but with a decent wedge of time between us, it does make for a good anecdote at least – and stories are what this place is all about.

You can feel it in the very architecture here. There are winding corridors, low ceilings and, from the outside, a tessellation of higgledy-piggledy rooflines that intimates the irregularly shaped rooms inside. Underfoot – not that you’d know it necessarily – is a warren of tunnels, once used to smuggle contraband (and seditious monks). There’s been a coaching inn here for 500 years, welcoming weary travellers on the road from Stoke-on-Trent to Shrewsbury – and now from further afield. One gets the feeling that if the Bear’s walls – so thick that each room has its own wifi code – could talk, the tales would be worth staying for another half to hear.

Not that you need another reason to settle in. The restaurant – stone-floored and wooden-walled – feels almost cabin-like in its boaty cosiness. Does the tongue-and-groove panelling have anything to do with the rumoured ghost here, we wonder? (A Scandinavian timber merchant by the name of Nielsen, he’s said to regale an account of his untimely demise at the hands of a feisty publican in the late 16^th century.) We’ll leave that one to you to work out – though we can confirm we experienced no ghoulish goings-on the night of our stay.

That’s not to say there was nothing out of the ordinary here, for the Bear is full of surprises, albeit of a more agreeable sort. Recently completely overhauled by interior designer Octavia Dickinson, it is now a stopping point of uncommon class – sumptuous in the manorial style, yet zhuzhed up with the trademark zippiness that’s seen Octavia become something of a darling in the decoration world. Pulling together a mishmash of prints and punchy paint colours, she’s got gumption and verve. In Inigo’s room (one of 12), fabulously fronded ferns (courtesy of GP&J Baker) covered the walls, punctuated with a beautiful Brigette Singh blockprint in shades of olive and cherry with chutzpah.

There’s a muscularity to these clever, confident clashes, the big reds and racing greens, the robust kilim-covered stools and the Augustus John prints that pop up about the place, but there’s also a softness. Octavia used work for Flora Soames – and you can see it in the flounce of a skirted seat, the tuft of a cushion edge, the scumbled roughness of raw silk. The textures here are excellent and endless, lending rooms a certain depth and delicious sense of luxury.

Octavia’s country-house MO makes sense here. Down the road from the Bear is Hodnet Hall, with its wondrous gardens, and the inn still belongs to the estate’s squires, the Heber-Percy family. Those of a more literary bent may recall the name, for Robert Heber-Percy – also known as ‘the Mad Boy’ among his merry band of Bright Young Things was the lover of Lord Berners, the inspiration for Lord Merlin in Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love.

But despite its somewhat old-fashioned set-up, the Bear feels firmly on the pulse, while remaining radically local: the salami we ate for breakfast came from less than 35 miles away, in Wenlock Edge; the cheese had travelled a mere 20; the beef from a next-door farm. And the sweet cicely for the ice cream? Grown outside the kitchen door. All this we learned from the general manager, who grew up in the village ­– confirmation, as if it’s needed, that this is a pub with a true sense of place. And all the better for it. The bears are (thankfully) gone. Long live the Bear!

Further reading

The Bear Inn

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