CAMPAIGN FOR REAL ALE

• Wild For Mild
• Microbrewery Takeovers
• George, Buckden
• Good Beer Guide Prague

They’re a problem, aren't they, old coaching inns? Huge great piles of mouldering masonry, full of rot both wet and dry, and normally in completely the wrong locations for modern needs – let's face it, who needs 'em?

Yes, it's a sad fact that the grand inns that used to be one of England's glories have had a thin time of late. No amount of history has been able to guarantee their safety, and some of the most historic of them have been drastically and unsympathetically altered, demoted to local beerhouses, or effectively left to rot.

Astonishingly to anyone with a sense of history, both the New Inn at Gloucester and the Angel & Royal at Grantham, two of Britain's most venerable late medieval inns, have had to be rescued at huge cost after years of neglect. Of lesser-known coaching inns, too many to mention have gone under altogether, victims of redundant locations and facilities that may have suited the 18th-century traveller but proved too hard to adapt to modern needs.

One that has survived – just – is at Buckden near Huntingdon where the George, a vast brick-built barracks of a place, fronted the Great North Road from the early 18th century until the 1970s, when the village was bypassed by the A1. Over the years the George's fortunes gradually faded, and half of it was even sold off piecemeal as shops, the post office, and a cottage. Then, three years ago, the two halves were reunited when the Furbank family came to the rescue.

Anne and Richard Furbank started a very swish dress shop in part of the sold-off half 27 years ago; and as their business grew they bought up the rest of it. Then in 2003 the George itself was put up for sale by Greene King as part of the fall-out from its acquisition of Old English Inns. And, says the Furbanks' daughter in-law Becky, the sale came as no surprise.

“You should have seen the state of the place,” she says. “The bedrooms were damp and peeling and were let out at B&B rates, mostly to visiting fishermen. There was no dining trade at all, and the bar was all dark paint and velvet upholstery with a horrible patterned carpet – and no customers to speak of.”

But the Furbanks knew the old inn had potential. Buckden is an affluent village; and having enjoyed the custom of the wealthier women of the district for many years, the Furbanks not only knew the market, they knew most of the market by name. The shop also attracts custom from much further afield, and Buckden – although it has another, even more historic, coaching inn, the 15th-century Lion – lacked a sufficiently chic venue for coffees and lunches.

And so they bought the George.

But it needed more than just a bit of TLC. The whole place closed in July 2003, and the ground floor didn't reopen until March 2004. (The 12 bedrooms, all named after various Georges – Best, Orwell, Washington and so on – reopened one by one thereafter). Becky won't say how much the refurbishment cost; but it looks expensive

For the six-month project saw the place utterly transformed, from a cheap and weary pastiche of an olde inn into a smart, modern, upmarket bar-brasserie with zinc counters, chunky woodwork buffed to gleaming-point, and comfortable leather chairs. The only original feature you'll see is the parquet floor, which reappeared as the swirly carpet and the concrete screed underneath it were hacked away. Even the layout is nothing like the original: part of the courtyard is now the Orangery, a conservatory-style dining room; what might once have been the coffee-room is now a very elegant private dining room; and the new bar and restaurant merge into each other, all light and air where once was solemn gloom.