The Snooty Fox - a salutary lesson

When I first moved up here in the early nineties, the Snooty Fox in Kirkby Lonsdale had a reputation for good food. It didn't take me too long to realise that by then it was coasting along on a reputation that had been earned years before. (This became very clear on the occasion when I sent back a tomato and mozzarella panini on the grounds that the cheese involved was cheddar. The chef didn't come out himself but sent back a message that it was a special cheddar and mozzarella "blend". I sent it back once again and more definitively this time but they still had the cheek to try and charge me for it.)

So the Snooty remained a pub that I might pop into occasionally but for which I didn't feel any particular affection. Then, sometime around 2005 or maybe 2006, a caretaker publican was installed, an Irish chap called Dave. He ran a good pub and after a little while I found that the Snooty had become my regular. And I wasn't the only person who took to it. What's more, the curious mixture of artefacts and decorations that the pub had acquired over many years suddenly seemed to click into place: the strange old costumes on the wall, the stuffed animals, the unprovenanced photographs.

After Dave had been there about eighteen months (I guess) the brewery decided to get in a full-time publican and, after a little encouragement, Dave went for the job. I'm sad to report that he didn't get it and the licence went to a couple who, as I understand it, had successfully run a "gastro pub" somewhere out in the Lakes. In they came with several buckets of whitewash and out went the homely and possibly ancient clutter to be replaced by unmemorable, generic decorations.

Since then, the pub has never recovered the atmosphere or the numbers that Dave seemed to bring to it quite effortlessly and a few weeks ago it locked its doors. If only the owners had looked and seen what Dave had achieved and not ignored this humble man in favour of a fashionable promise. (Grumble over.)