THE MOORFIELDS
Sarah Moolla finds it’s a case of more, more, more please at the newly refurbed Moorfields pub
Y
ou know that bit at the end of a restaurant review when the writer vows to return because they’ve loved it so much. And you wonder – do they mean that? Or are they just fobbing us off because they can’t think of how to end the review? Well, no such hackneyed false pay off lines here, because, cards on the refurbed table, I love The Moorfields so much, I’ve been back, not once, but twice. I was vaguely aware of Moorfields before Joe Cussens and his Bath Pub Company got their turn-waterinto-wine mitts on it, with the help of Stonegate Pub Company. Not far from the Moorland Road, and en route to the Linear Way, it was a dishevelled-looking giant of a boozer, tired, grubby and in no way inviting. So I never visited, and I’m hard pressed to find anyone who has, except one friend’s mum who went ‘back in the day to play skittles and drink rum and cokes.’ In fairness
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to the old Moorfields, it’s one of those sorts of pubs we all knew and loved growing up – Big D salted peanuts behind the bar stuck to a board that would eventually reveal a busty babe; a spongy old dartboard; sticky red swirly carpets; and a big annoying bell for clanging ‘time gentleman please’. But if places like this don’t evolve, they get shunned. A few of the party faithful might hang on in there nursing their halves of bitter and the occasional Barcadi Breezer, but nobody new is going to be tempted in. But The Moorfields’ transformation, just weeks into opening, has them flocking in, new and old alike. Its arrival, while it might have been tricky timing for Joe’s team, was a godsend for the rest of us. A statuesque and elegant, yet cosy cocoon of a gastropub, born in the midst of a pandemic, suggesting that progression is still possible despite these bleak times, but also offering an immediate and welcome refuge from the outside world
