The Square & Compass at Worth Matravers in Dorset has a reputation as one of the best pubs in the country. And guess what? It is.
We got there the long way round: a bus from Poole to Swanage and then a long walk along the coast path via Durlston Castle and Dancing Ledge.
We’ve been slowly checking off stretches of the South West Coast Path for about a decade. In our experience, it’s the perfect way to approach a pub.
After hours with the sea on one side and woods or open land on the other, you become gently disconnected from reality.
It becomes about putting one foot in front of the other, warding off the sun, warding off the rain, and negotiating never-ending ups that lead into never-ending downs, in never-ending cycles.
This has the effect of making almost any pub you reach at the end seem idyllic, and any beer taste like nectar. In this case, though, the pub really was special.
We approached through a wooded valley, up and across a common striped with lynchets, and finally along a lane covered over with trees.
The pub appeared at the end of this tunnel, on a pedestal, haloed with white sky, and enveloped in bird song.
The garden was busy with parties of walkers and day trippers, and a light seasoning of locals.
We passed straight through and into a shady hallway where we found a menu on a chalkboard and two serving hatches.
This arrangement instantly told us we were not quite in the 21st century.
Bar staff popped up in one hatch or another, slipping and winding around each other to pull beer from the bank of casks on the back wall, or to fetch cider.
When it comes to food, it’s pies, pasties or crisps – a defiant gesture for a country pub in well-to-do tourist country. In the space of a few minutes we heard what might amount to the pub’s catchphrase several times: “No, sorry, just the pies and pasties listed on the board there…”
We ordered pints of cask ale from the local Swanage brewery Hattie Brown’s, and a cheese and onion pasty.
The pub has tables inside but not many. It’s a summer place, really, and all the action is in the garden.
The table we found available was, like all the others, a slab of stone balanced on smaller chunks of stone. At the centre was a rock with a fossil – an ornament, or designed to stop crisp packets blowing away in the wind?
Looking out from the garden is as magical as looking up at it from the lane. We had a view of the hills sloping down to the sea, fading into haziness beneath a big white sky.
At one point an ancient blue Landini tractor passed by, its upright driver puffing on a pipe, like something from a 1950s British Transport documentary.
In the hedgerows, on the telephone wires, and on freestanding stones, birds gathered and chattered.… Then, unbelievably, they came to visit.
Sparrows and robins flittered around the tables picking up crumbs of crust, staring challengingly into the eyes of drinkers. A blackbird stole a crisp from a packet, after a slow, polite approach.
Then we noticed, dangling from the roof of one of two smoking sheds, and fixed to the walls, paper decorations with occult symbols. Remember what Ray said about real ale and folk horror a few weeks ago? The troubling concept of ‘deep England’ sprang to mind, too.
After a couple of pints, or a few pints, rather, we hiked up the hill to the bus stop.
We passed the opening to a cold war bunker buried beneath a field – more weirdness – and then found ourselves across the road from a perfect red phone box.
The arrival of the number 40 bus, also known as the ‘Purbeck Breezer’, broke the spell.
Was any of it real? We’ll have to go back again some time to really be sure.
3 replies on “The Square and Compass: a pub on the edge of reality”
One of only five pubs to have appeared in every edition of the GBG ; a Winter visit is magic !
Appeared in Bill Bailey’s Perfect Pub Walks series on C4. I’ve not been in for over 40 years… didn’t seem to have changed much from what remembered in that time.
Back in the late 70s, I was in my early 20s, newly married, with my first car, and exploring my country. And I’d discovered beer and pubs thanks to my lovely dad, in about 1973. My wife’s aunt had a caravan near Durdle Door, so we stayed there for a week in 1979. Driving around that beautiful countryside (I was/am a Thomas Hardy fan too) was quite magical. One grey damp late afternoon we were heading back to the caravan, and my wife needed a toilet break. A pub sign appeared through a sea fret. I’ll stop here, if it’s open, we’ll have a quick drink and use the loo. It was the Square and Compass. Back then such pubs weren’t quite so unusual, but I thought it was pretty special, even from outside. It was open, and inside was even more special. Through the door, a short corridor, no bar, but a half door, with a wonderful chap, in his 40s I supposed, long hair, even longer whiskers, behind it. The legendary landlord, I later discovered. Casks on a stillage behind him. The beer was Ushers, I think. A pint, a loo visit, and off we went. We returned the following summer, and sat outside, a stunning valley dropping away to the sea beneath us, alive with rabbits munching grass on the sunlit hillside. What a pub. I’m still surprised how I stumbled across it on my travels, 45 years ago, without any pub or national heritage guides to follow. I doubt I’ll get there ever again, but I’m happy to hear it’s hardly changed.