Some pubs you visit because they're nearby. The Howard Arms is the kind you'll drive half an hour for, happily, and then wish you'd booked a room so you didn't have to leave. It has been standing on the village green at Ilmington for four centuries, and it wears every year well.
Ilmington is one of those villages that sits just far enough off the beaten track to have kept its composure. The Howard Arms faces the green, all honeyed stone and low doorways, with a garden that catches the last of the evening sun. Inside, the rooms are warm and quietly handsome: flagstone floors, open fires in winter, candles on the tables once the light goes. The kitchen takes its ingredients seriously (local, seasonal, carefully sourced) without making a fuss about it. The Michelin Guide noticed; so did we. It is the sort of place where a midweek supper stretches into a second bottle and a long conversation, and nobody minds.
There are rooms upstairs if you find yourself reluctant to leave, though from the cottage the drive home is only about 40 minutes through quiet lanes. Ilmington itself is worth a wander: a proper working village with an orchard, a community shop and two Norman churches. The Howard Arms is its anchor, and it is easy to see why people keep coming back.
“Worth the drive every time. The food is genuinely excellent, the room is beautiful, and Ilmington feels like a village the modern world forgot to spoil.”
All of this on the doorstep, and your own thatched cottage to come home to. Sleeps seven, less than a mile from Soho Farmhouse.