Hello Mark:

I was today reading your wonderful account of the village of
Challacombe. This site is the first one I have found in years that tell
the real story of the village. Mostly, Challacombe
is mentioned slightly on some sites.   

I wonder if you can tell me something about the family
that ran the Ring O'Bells (now Black Venus) in the early
l960's. l961, 1962 at least.

The following story is a favourite memory of mine from when my 
family were staying at Dunster Beach  for holidays those summers and we
went looking for 
a place on Exmoor to have lunch. I hope you enjoy the story 
and can me something about the pub. 

It was another day of a holiday spent at Dunster Beach cottages in the
late summer of  l961. We had come to spend a couple of weeks in this
area along with my parents and brother Will.. The cottages were situated
one mile from the little village of Dunster. Over the famous Pack Horse
Bridge.http://www.netspeed.com.au/sgskelt/eng/dunster6.jpg  We were
headed out to visit the area of Tarr Steps, a beauty spot within miles
of Dunster that day.  There are several other places along the way to
visit. It is beautiful country since it is on the edge of Exmoor, a wild
and extraordinary area of great unspoiled beauty, rugged and mysterious.
Also, there are many small villages to explore in the area.

As we  approached  lunchtime  we decided to look for a place to
 eat.  My Father wanted to find a nice place for us all to have lunch.
However, I  remember that in Britain you definitely had to have lunch by
at least l:30pm or else you were out of luck and even then many things
on the menu were no longer available. There were specific times for
lunch and if you were late that was it....no lunch.

I remember riding along and coming across a few country hotels. Once
again my father was suspicious about the cooking in these places. As a
rule  if he so much as whiffed the smell of cheap frying oil...or
linseed oil as he used to call it, he would walk out or drive away. He
was convinced that restaurants often fried everything and then kept on
reusing the oil. He was probably right. Some were much worse than others
I remember.

  He stopped the car a few times and asked Bill(my brother) to go and
have a look and a sniff at some of these country places we came upon
along this sightseeing route......if they smelled of "linseed" cooking
oil at all then we wouldn't go in. Also, I remember he asked him to read
the menus
often posted outside the hotel and to note the serving times.
 By this time it was approaching almost 2:00pm.
We were all starving hungry having had breakfast very early in the
morning.

Also, by this time, we were on Exmoor, where signs of life are
definitely much more sparse than the other areas we had passed through
over the last couple of hours.  Eventually we came to a very small place
on the main road, the little village of Challacombe. There was a post
office
and shop, some cottages, and one  pub called 'The Ring O'Bells'.
We parked the car and went into the pub which actually had a small
dining room which was, of course, closed.  The pub was run by an elderly
couple who had two daughters(?)one of whom had a brace on one of her
legs..  They had some rooms on the top floor that they let out to
guests. There were photographs of Harold McMillan on the wall of the
small room adjoining the main bar, showing him dressed in plus fours
with a brace of grouse and a note saying that he had stayed there in the
past on grouse shooting trips. I remember the rooms were full of
Edwardian chinaware which consisted for the most part of statues of
people and animals all decorated with gold leaf. The  place had a "past
era", somewhat prewar (WW2)  feel to it.  We asked one of the daughters
if they could provide us with some lunch. We were pretty desperate for a
meal by this time.

Good news....there seemed to be no problem at all with this and they
asked us to wait a few moments while they put a "little something"
together. I
remember we all went outside for a short walk to a little
stream with stepping stones over it. It was a very beautiful wild meadow
area with lovely views all around us. There were five of us there that
day I remember. 

After approx. 20 minutes we  all went into a small outbuilding adjoining
the pub to wait for the  meal to be prepared  In this room  there was a
very large fuchsia plant in a pot. The room  was a garden room I think.
Everything in it was very old indeed.  We found out later that this
plant had been around for literally decades in this family. It was in
full bloom. Fuchsias seem to do very well in this part of the world and
in places like Clovelly actually grow as hedgerows!!!!

I seem to remember us all being quite apprehensive about what might
appear for lunch as we grew hungrier and hungrier. We would have been
appreciative of a small pub lunch at this point even though my father
wanted to have a proper meal.

Eventually, we were summoned into the bar at the front of the building
where the lunch would be served.  It was an amazing and memorable meal
when it did arrive.  They served each of us cold salad plates with large
slices of  tender home cured ham that covered the dinner plates and all
the salad and vegetables
on the plates, such a lettuce, spring onions, radishes, celery, etc.,
were home grown including the hot house tomatoes. There was a plate of
home baked bread and delicious creamy butter. The portions were very
generous I remember.  Then appeared dishes with a selection of home made
condiments such as mustards, relishes, beet root and pickled onions,
etc. to accompany the meal.  After we had literally demolished this food
and were feeling very exhilarated that we had managed to find somewhere
this special to eat; the daughter appeared at the table with  a large
whole deep dish
blackberry and apple pie. The pastry was as light as a feather and
freshly baked that morning. A more delicious pie I have never tasted. To
accompany this amazing dessert was a very large bowl piled high with
fresh clotted cream.  Ambrosia indeed. I think we probably had some
drinks as well.  I remember the whole meal being simply amazing and most
unexpected especially after the hunt for a "linseed" oiless
restaurant.!!!!!

When the bill for the meal came to be paid it was at the very most 12
shillings for everything!!!!!!!  This must have been a mid week
adventure because I remember telephoning the pub from Dunster Beach
several days later after a bit of a struggle to find the number through
the archaic
phone system and reserving a table in their dining room for the
following Sunday for lunch.

 We all went  along for Sunday lunch  and were served a very delicious
meal of Roast Lamb with garden fresh vegetables, including new
potatoes,  home made mint sauce, followed by a delicious dessert of
pears and  creamy home made junket, then biscuits and cheese. The dining
room was very busy and the daughters served the patrons.  I also
remember them telling us that they had a large garden at the back of the
pub where they grew all their own vegetables, also a small greenhouse
for tomatoes. Beside that they had a small smokehouse.    What a lovely
place. I would never forget it neither did any of our family.

I spent a week in Devon just over a month ago but didn't get to
Challacombe this time.  I live in Vancouver, British Columbia
and have for many many years, although I am from Sutton Coldfield
area originally.



About l5 years later I found myself once again in the village of
Challacombe and outside the pub. It was renamed "The Black Venus". I
have no idea where the name came from but it was and still is the
fashion in Britain to change the names of pubs and transform some of
them into places that people looked uncomfortable in mostly.( A lot of
the furnishings and fittings from many of these pubs ended up in Canada
and America. They were sold to dealers by the contractors who changed
these pubs forever under the directions of the breweries. Sadly,
however, some of these interiors were illegally removed (read stolen)
and it is believed that they were shipped out of the country possibly to
America where they were sold for extremely large amounts of money. The
"customers" had literally been shown photographs of these interiors and
had literally "ordered" them by choice!!!!!!

.  It was a surprise in this case to see so many changes in the pub but
then times had changed also. Another brewery had bought the pub and
changed it's name I suspect.  It was closed and when I looked through
the windows I could see
some pinball machines. It looked rather scruffy and I felt rather sad.
It is still called the "The Black Venus" in 2002. It will always be the
Ring O'Bells to me and I'm glad that it was closed at that time.

I am sure it is much nicer inside these days.

Thanks for reading this Mark


Jenny Nicol
Vancouver, Canada