Saturday 7th/Sunday 8th October, 2023 – Wombleton, Marton, Nunnington

Back in the UK, and we made a weekend trip to Yorkshire complete with an overnight stay. The impetus behind the trip was to see our friends Richard and Lindsey and to try out their new culinary venture, the Plough Inn, in the delightfully named village of Wombleton, in Ryedale, in North Yorkshire. We’ve known the two of them for the better part of two decades, beginning when I discovered their first restaurant, the delightful Artisan in Hessle. A decade later, and several landlords of varying degrees of flakiness, idiocy and outright mendacity now in the rear-view mirror, they have finally found a new home that I think will suit them almost as well as Artisan did, if not better. With a soft opening on 1st October, their first full weekend was 7th/8th October, so we got ourselves organised, and made plans to head up to Yorkshire for dinner on the Saturday. Needless to say, with a three-hour drive to get there, we wouldn’t be coming back the same night!

We got away bang on midday and arrived at the village of Wombleton precisely three hours later, driving straight through. We wanted to drop by the pub ahead of time so we could have a chat, before going off to find our B&B. The Plough wasn’t hard to find. There are no other pubs in the village, which given it has a population of around 400 is not at all surprising. It was looking pretty good from the outside.

We stayed for a tour round and a chat with Lindsey, followed by a quick drink and making friends with Henry the black retriever who was disguising himself against the dark coloured carpet, apparently having ambitions towards becoming a trip hazard. He was doing a fine job of it.

We then headed out to find the village of Marton, which was easy, and the bed and breakfast we’d booked, which wasn’t quite so easy. It certainly wasn’t where the SatNav believed it to be, and I was very grateful that Libby, the landlady, had sent me the what3words location of the front door. Amazing how different it was from what the post code would have suggested. We were delighted with the welcome and with the quality of the accommodation at Rosegarth. We had a well-furnished and thoughtfully provisioned bedroom, and a very smart bathroom, and were made to feel right at home by Libby. Anyway, we had enough time for a change of clothes, a cup of tea and a biscuit of two, and then it was back to the Plough for dinner.

On arrival we started with a lovely glass of Yorkshire fizz, from Westow Vineyard, a handful of miles distant and long a feature on Lindsey’s wine lists.

As we weren’t ready to go in yet, we followed that with a Kir Royale made with Calancombe Estate Cassis from Devon, and more of the Yorkshire fizz. We could almost pretend it was still summer.

We were soon comfortably seated in the dining room and awaiting our first course. Lynne had gone for the citrus cured organic Glenarm salmon, with a prawn cocktail, some lovely pickled cucumber, and a herb oil. As usual, Richard had done a splendid job on the curing, and the accompaniments went very well with the firm-fleshed fish. I ordered the wild mushroom and tarragon soup, because I can never resist anything with wild mushrooms in it. It also contains shards of confit chicken breast that melted in the mouth, and came with its own mini-baguette.

Mains were the usual tour-de-force, where I decided, despite not normally eating pork (I find it can be hard to digest), that I would go for Richard’s favourite, slow-braised pork belly, with a slab of roast pork fillet, cider potatoes, greens, a tart apple puree and a sticky, lip-coating pork sauce. Lynne chose the duck, which came as two half breasts, honey glazed, on a bed of crushed peas, with a scattering of baby onions, a heritage carrot and star anise puree, potatoes, and an equally deep flavour-packed red wine sauce.

There was no way that a dessert was possible after that, so we considered our options, and went for the selection of artisan Yorkshire cheese, biscuits, and chutney to be shared between us, and a glass of the Graham’s 10-year old tawny port. That brought us four fairly substantial pieces of cheese, including a piece of Coverdale, which I now really want to source a supply of. That’s a remarkably good cheese! The biscuits were excellent too, light enough to not make your feel you were wading your way through something that was designed to obscure the taste of the cheese, and with just the right amount of snap. The apple slices were refreshing, and that was also a very good chutney.

We finished the evening in conversation with the people on the next table, and eventually made it back to the B&B around midnight, full of food and very content. We plan on trying to get back there again very soon, possibly before Christmas.

And when we woke up, we were again very well fed, Libby providing our choice of “continental” breakfast (we knew we wouldn’t want a cooked breakfast). The choice was superb, and reinforced my belief that we will book there again when we go up for dinner. There was yogurt, cereals, fruit salad, meats, cheeses, eggs, tomato, cucumber, avocado, toast, croissants, butter, home-made jam and marmalade, juices, a choice of teas, and coffee.

It was fantastic, and far more impressive than many a hotel. After breakfast we opted to visit nearby Nunnington Hall, making use of our National Trust membership. “Nunnington Hall is a country house situated in the English county of North Yorkshire. The river Rye, which gives its name to the local area, Ryedale, runs past the house, flowing away from the village of Nunnington. A stone bridge over the river separates the grounds of the house from the village. Above, a ridge known as Caulkley’s Bank lies between Nunnington and the Vale of York to the south. The Vale of Pickering and the North York Moors lie to the north and east. Nunnington Hall is owned, conserved and managed as a visitor attraction by the National Trust.”

On our arrival we immediately made the acquaintance of the resident peacocks, which are reputed to be descendants of birds taken from Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. Apparently one of the current flock (if that’s not too big a word) is a relatively recent introduction after the peahen was taken by foxes.  One of the boys had a lot to say for himself, that’s for sure.

The first Nunnington Hall was mentioned in the thirteenth century and the site has had many different owners. They include William Parr 1st Marquess of Northampton (brother of Catherine Parr, so well connected), Dr Robert Huicke (physician to Catherine Parr and Elizabeth I), Richard Graham 1st Viscount Preston, the Rutson family and the Fife family. The present building is a combination of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century work. Most of the building seen today was created during the 1680s, when Richard Graham 1st Viscount Preston, was its owner.  Richard certainly had enough money to create a relatively grand house even if he had an ability to back the wrong cause. he promptly lost the property when he was attainted in 1689 for attempting to join James II in France (though he was later given it back along with a pardon). The estate later passed to the Norton Conyers’ Grahams before being sold to William Rutson in 1838.

The last owners were Rutson’s great-niece Margaret, and her husband Ronald D’Arcy Fife who was clearly quite the character. They spent the 1920s thoroughly renovating the property using the architect Walter Brierley, and it was Margaret who gave the hall and its gardens to the National Trust when she died in 1952, She also bequeathed the Trust £25,000 for the upkeep of the property.

What is particularly startling to modern visitors, I suspect, are the animal skins on the wall in the Stone Hall, when you enter the property. Apparently Colonel Fife was a keen big game hunter, hence the somewhat macabre display. Just for variety, he also displayed a Prussian Officer’s helmet, flintlock pistols, and a bayonet, presumably reflecting his military career.

As befits a rambling old house, there are a couple of good ghost stories associated with the place, no doubt the result of people with over-active imaginations staying there and being told tall tales over dinner, or similar. They’re entertaining enough. More entertaining was the Carlisle Collection of miniature rooms which has been at the hall since 1981. It is an incredible collection of intricate miniature rooms in glass cases, along with a smaller collection of furniture makers’ scale samples. The attention to detail is just fantastic, including tiny books containing actual text, including the complete works of William Shakespeare. There’s a massive wow factor to a lot of it.

Also creating delight was the photographic exhibition on the top floor. This was “Fields, folds and farming life” (which is on until 17th December and I would urge you to see it if you can) and explores what it’s like to live, grow up and work on a rural farm in the heart of Bransdale through the seasons. It’s by Valerie Mather who used to be a lawyer, but now is very much a photographer, and one with a great eye.  I also learnt a second word that I’d not encountered before, “hefted”, which is when sheep know where they belong – apparently this is what happens with moorland sheep in regard to the place where they are born. One of the farmers in the films showing as part of the exhibition spoke of being hefted to the place where he farms too.

This was the second new word of the day, the first one being “treen”, as in something small made out of wood. You learn something new every day.

After we’d been around the house, we stopped for coffee, tea and a scone (in this instance, the scone of the month, which is a concept I can definitely get behind). This was a large, fluffy inside and with a crunchy outer crust, pumpkin and salted caramel offering, the caramel coming in the form of a sauce, which stuck to the plate, the knife, me, and most of the surrounding universe as far as I could tell! It was good but messy.

After that we took a walk around the gardens, where a surprising number of roses were still in flower. I imagine it’s glorious in spring and summer. As it was it was a pleasant stroll.

After that it was around 1:30 so we got on the road, arriving home in good order three hours later.