MY PUB: the Merry Harriers, Hambledon, Surrey

It has a superb all-round offer with 15 rooms available to rent, a huge amount of land where livestock live and fulfil the pub’s menu, and a lust for local cask ales.

Here, co-owner Alex Winch tells The Morning Advertiser all about this lovely pub.

The pub

The Merry Harriers is a 16^th century rural pub in the Surrey Hills. The pub has been a freehold since the 1980s and has enjoyed a number of eccentric landlords over its time.

In 2023, we purchased the pub from the De Savery family, who had installed 15 rooms into the pub, five shepherd’s huts, six rooms in an old stable block in the garden and four rooms in the old landlord’s accommodation above the pub.

Unusually, the pub comes with more than nine acres of paddock.

For the past 12 years, llamas were kept in the fields and a llama trekking business was run from the pub, which helped sell rooms and promote the pub.

When we purchased the pub, with a farm-to-fork culture, we decided the llamas didn’t quite fit with our philosophy and they moved on to greener pastures. We are now using the fields to graze livestock destined for the menu. The pub benefits from a beautiful, terraced garden overlooking the fields, where we host monthly live music events.

Since purchasing the pub, we have focused on becoming a food destination while still remaining at the centre of the village community.

The publican

The pub was purchased by Sam Fiddian-Green and myself, who have been friends since we were children.

Having both grown up in Surrey, we worked in restaurants in London, Australia and Denmark.

During Covid, we set up Hilltop Kitchen, a cafe-restaurant situated on Sam’s family farm. It was a runaway success and quickly led us to start looking for a new project to grow into.

The Merry Harriers was a popular post-shift drinking spot and, after a number of letters enquiring, we finally started discussing the purchase of the Merry Harriers with the De Savery team.

The trade

The Merry Harriers is situated on the outskirts of the village of Hambledon, near Godalming.

The village has always been very supportive of the pub with a thirst for real ale that keeps the beer nice and fresh.

As new publicans, we have wanted to retain this village pub culture while promoting the pub to a wider audience via our elevated farm-to-fork menu. We generally have a 40:60 split in wet & dry sales.

The team

In total, we have about 30 staff working with us at the Merry Harriers, split between the kitchen, front of house and housekeeping.

All our staff are generally hired locally and we are very proud of our training and development programmes, leading to a very low staff turnover.

Sam and I both lead by example, working alongside the team. David and Kelly live onsite: David is our pub manager while Kelly manages all bookings and is his assistant manager.

We took on Freddie Innes just before Christmas to be our head chef. He has done a fantastic job turning the kitchen into a well-oiled machine and giving Sam the ability to carry out all our butchery from the farm and develop new dishes.

The drink

We are very proud of our ale programme. We source all our ales locally and regularly rotate three out of the four hand pumps.

Shere Drop by Surrey Hills Brewery is the most-awarded local ale and our only constant feature; anyone visiting needs to have a pint of this before getting seated.

I was a sommelier for a number of years and have put together a concise and exciting wine list with plenty of English wines available, particularly those from the local vineyard Greyfriars. We also have our own lager, made by 360 Brewing Company in Brighton, which we are very excited about.

The food

All our produce is sourced from the farm or the surrounding area. We have a whole animal cooking approach, serving both sirloin and beef heart on the menu alongside lamb and pork from the farm.

Although we would admit our menu is elevated, dishes such as our banger & colcannon with onion gravy is simple and a thing of beauty. We only serve fish & chips on a Friday, when the fish is caught by day boats on a Wednesday and as fresh as possible.

We have always liked to promote sharing dishes. Prime cut steaks are only offered in larger formats to share. Alternatively, you can pick our seasonal pie for two or half a chicken, all served with crispy potatoes and seasonal sides.

Each month, we will host a set menu evening, allowing our head chef Freddie to write a seasonal menu showcasing what is in season and the incredible skills within our kitchen team.

The events

We try to have an event to promote each week. Mondays are our village nights, when we will only serve fresh sourdough pizzas in the summer or curry in the winter.

We then organise a monthly pub quiz and bingo night on a Monday, which are always a lot of fun and get the village to the pub. As mentioned above, we also host set menu events and, in the summer, we will host live music in the garden each month.

The future

By the end of this year, we will have redecorated all the rooms to be in line with our look and feel which we are very excited about. We also have plans to further develop the paddocks into a smallholding to promote our farm-to-table approach.

Looking further into the future, we will continue to keep an eye out for another pub to take on in the Surrey Hills area. Watch this space.