The Duncombe Arms

It was our own fault. Mr Smith and I, both being of good North English stock, should really know better than to arrive at a country inn in the middle of Sunday lunch service. What were we thinking? As we stepped over the threshold of the 19th-century Duncombe Arms inn we were immediately swerving left and right to avoid steaming plates of roast dinner being expelled rapid-fire from the nearby kitchen, skilfully carried at shoulder height by striding waiters and waitresses with deep concentration etched across their faces. Every table in the place was full and a happy lively clatter and chatter from soon-to-be stuffed customers filled the air. As a glorious Yorkshire pudding the size of Mr Smith’s head was propelled past us, we began to regret not having arrived early enough to join in this feasting. As it was we were, to be frank, getting in the way. 

At first view it was clear that the Duncombe Arms is an artfully presented pub with a loyal local clientele. Although certainly elevated to ‘special-occasion dinner’ status with its neat and pretty conservatory-style restaurant and manicured garden, it retains all the flagstone floor, squeaky leather banquettes and real-fire smokiness that customers demand from an authentic countryside establishment. And, nestled into the beautiful Peak District, just a stone’s-throw from beauty spots that would make Wordsworth weep, The Duncombe Arms is every inch the quintessential country inn. Mr Smith and I had come exploring, but for now, we needed to extract ourselves from the doorway and out of the firing range of slow-cooked meats. We headed to the bar.

It was here that Nardine, the cool-under-fire deputy manager, found us and escorted us to our room. For those dreaming of a charmingly antiquated country-house stay, the newly built suites, set apart from the 1850 inn, might lack a little, well, age. But what the rooms are short of in years they make up for in square-footage and style. Our suite was palatial, high-ceilinged, stone-walled, and with a bed so huge we wondered if it might have straddled the county border; Mr Smith snoozing in Derbyshire and myself out like a light in Staffordshire. 

The Duncombe Arms does indeed sit midway between these counties in the tiny village of Ellastone. In the cosy bar pictures of racing horses adorn the walls, a reminder that Uttoxeter’s famous racecourse is just a short drive away. Similarly, Stoke-on-Trent and the historic Potteries are close by. But it is the proximity to the Peak District, in all its verdant, rolling, dramatic glory that is the geographical detail worth noting. And I should know, as I repeatedly tell Mr Smith, because the Peak District is from where I hail. So, being replete with the kind of local knowledge that money can’t buy (as I also repeatedly tell Mr Smith) we turn on our heels and hit the country lanes. En route to the Duncombe Arms we had spent the morning filling our poor city-stunted eyes with the gargantuan picture-perfect vistas of Chatsworth House and its Capability Brown-designed grounds. We whispered our way through its grand halls and stood like miniature incarnations of ourselves in front of its colossal fountains. We bought the obligatory chutney from the farm shop. Now, we stopped briefly in the cobbled market town of Ashbourne before strolling through the ludicrously idyllic sandstone village of Tissington and onward for a more serious exercising of legs and romancing of the soul up into the blissful rocky peak. As the sun began to slowly lower, throwing welcome warmth onto both us and the dark stone cliffs, we also began our descent into Dovedale, a valley so pretty as to have become an enduring motif for the great Romantic artists, and today such a draw with bucolic-loving tourists as to create frequent hiker jams of visiting walkers. We returned to our stately room replenished, and yet ravenous.

It is just as well that the Duncombe Arms does dinner very, very, well. Mr Smith and I took our place in the small candlelit dining room among our fellow guests and reviewed the menu of finessed classic dishes; each featuring some small but delicious deviation from the norm and all boasting carefully selected locally sourced ingredients. After three courses of delicious ‘fayre’, our minds were finally distracted from the missed opportunity that was Sunday lunch. We retired to a quiet corner of the old inn, now hushed and creaking, as though getting ready to slumber, after which it would awaken for another day of welcoming visiting out-of-towners, weary city dwellers, treat-seekers, all those in need of respite and the kind of reinvigoration that only such a place as the Duncombe Arms and the glorious Peak District beyond could bring. You see, the very best things, I tell Mr Smith as he performs a dramatic eye-roll, come from here.