Clare Jenkins Reviews The Falcon Hotel. Miss Marple Meets Colonel Mustard In England’s Smallest County.
Outside The Falcon Hotel, a handsome man in mustard corduroy trousers, mulberry-coloured cashmere sweater and Panama hat is getting out of an open-top sports car. On the other side of the Market Place, a woman wearing jeans and hunting boots is being pulled along by her chocolate Labrador.
And an older woman in calf-length black skirt and cream jacket is helping her elderly husband into the parish church for the 8am Communion service. Oh, and next to the sports car is a bottle green vintage Jaguar…
It’s just another Sunday in Uppingham, Rutland’s second largest market town (the first is Oakham), and essentially a large, posh school with small town attached. Sadly, unless you can afford the fees (around £29,000 for day pupils, up to £48,000 for boarders), you can only admire the outside of the handsome Tudor, Georgian and Victorian buildings: the interiors are out of bounds to the public.
However, during term-time, you can rub shoulders with future Cabinet Ministers and City financiers as they line up, very politely, for their sandwiches outside Baines Bakery in the High Street.
One place you can explore at leisure is the nearby and equally handsome Falcon Hotel. Comfortable and friendly, it began as a 16th Century coaching inn: what is now the foyer, bar and open-plan lounge was originally the entrance for coaches and horses trundling along the Great North Road.
Today, its 19th Century neo-Gothic frontage faces a street lined by other ancient honey-coloured stone buildings, including antique shops and not one but three gents’ outfitters.
Once inside, you immediately enter the world of Cluedo’s Colonel Mustard and Professor Plum, with more than a hint of Miss Marple and her neighbour Mrs Price-Ridley, gossip-in-chief in St Mary Mead.
Not that all the guests sipping coffee in the lounge, or a glass of ale in the oak-panelled Tap Room, are gossiping, of course. They may well be discussing international politics as much as the politics of the local playing fields committee and what cakes to bake for the village teas.
But they create a glorious sense of Middle England, as demonstrated by the monthly get-togethers of the Rutland Probus Club, who meet here for lunch followed by a talk on palaeontology, astronomy, microbes – or maple syrup.
They and other guests are drawn here by the coats of arms, comfy armchairs, vintage photos of the hotel, flower- and fountain-filled Garden Terrace, and an Oak Room offering exposed oak beams, latticed mullion windows, open fireplace and high-backed chairs covered in Tudor design plaid covers. The Falcon Hotel is also perfectly placed: just four miles from Rutland Water, six miles from Oakham, and surrounded by villages full of manor houses and thatched cottages, ancient churches and gardens full of hollyhocks, honeysuckle and lavender.
Our front-facing room is spacious and equally reassuringly traditional in style, its king-size bed covered in a tweedy throw and cushions depicting romantically bucolic scenes, matching the design of the heavy, floor-length curtains (courtesy of Sarah Harding Interiors just across the Market Place). Enticingly, in front of the window are two low armchairs – all the better to spy on passersby.
But that will have to wait as we’re due to have dinner in the newly-opened, ground-floor Fern restaurant (you can also dine in the bar area). The décor here is neutral, the furniture chic and unfussy, the clientele smart, the atmosphere relaxed, with unintrusive music creating an intimate atmosphere.
The service, here as throughout the hotel, is helpful and refreshingly down-to-earth. All the food is organic and locally sourced: lamb from Launde Farm just across the Leicestershire border, for instance, beef from a farm in nearby Whissendine, bread from Hambleton Bakery, fruit and veg from Northamptonshire – and also freshly picked from head chef Ali Duncombe’s father’s allotment just up the road.
Vegetarians and vegans are very well catered for, as shown in the special menu Ali has devised for us. The concept overall is shared plates, so – although our curiosity is aroused by the ‘Blooming Snowball Onion, rose petal harissa, pistachio pesto’ – we order grilled flatbread with honey, burrata and kale at £7, together with ‘Honeymoon Tomato, burrata heart and basil pesto’ (£9).
For the larger plates, we go for braised carrot crumble with whipped feta and kale (£12) and spinach and Ricotta tortellini with smoked cashews (£16). All accompanied by a bottle of organic Verdejo Spanish wine at £29.
The dishes are beautifully presented and delicately flavoured, with an imaginative combination of crunchy and creamy, honey and spicy. “That’s one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten,” says my husband, a former national newspaper hotel reviewer himself. And that’s before he’s tasted my ‘Granita al Limone’ – a refreshing lemon ice served in a lemon shell. No wonder Rutland calls itself ‘The County of Good Taste’.
Back in our room, we check out the diners leaving Don Paddy’s popular brasserie across the Market Place and the drinkers downing their final pints outside the Vaults bar (both owned by The Falcon). The next morning, we’re awake early enough to watch people collecting their copies of The Times and Telegraph from the next-door newsagents.
Meanwhile, volunteers are watering the geraniums outside the Grade II* listed Georgian Post Office, and staff at Norton’s ironmongers are putting tubs of bird food, sacks of compost and long-handled brushes outside the shop, above whose doorway is a metal plough – there have been ironmongers on the site since 1761.
We breakfast on fruit and cereals followed by poached eggs on avocado on sourdough. My only slight quibble is the music: an all-purpose playmix of morning songs, from The Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun through to Wham’s Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go. Surely we should be listening to the theme tunes from Miss Marple or Midsomer Murders – or from Downton Abbey?
Tell Me More About The Falcon Hotel
The Falcon Hotel, Market Place, Uppingham, LE15 9PY. Tel: 01572-823535,
Room rates start at £125 for a double, B&B in the low season
