Say goodbye to the 'smoking room'

Licensees Claire and Nisa McCutcheon are planning to run a competition among their customers to help them come up with a new name for the 'smoking room' in their pub.

The room, at the Harrow Inn in Steep, Hampshire, has held the name ever since it was added onto the 16th century pub in the 1890s.

Now the sisters, the third generation of their family to run the Harrow Inn at Steep, Hampshire, are scratching their heads trying to think of a new name.

"We obviously can't go on calling it the 'Smoking Room' because that won't be allowed or people will think they can go on smoking there," says Claire, who runs the bar side of the business.

"I think it was given its old name to make it sound much posher. People could come in and light their pipes and have their cigars whilst the farm-workers and drovers in the public bar probably chewed tobacco and spat into spittoons."

The Harrow, which was named champion unspoilt pub by the Good Pub Guide and has been included in every one of its editions, has just been picked out for a special award as only one of three "authentic" pubs in Alastair Sawday's Pubs and Inns of England and Wales