Pink & Lily, Bucks, pub review: 'laughter, and inn-fires'

Despite, or perhaps because of, their easy reach from London, the Chiltern Hills capture that sense of gentle timelessness that is the essence of the English countryside. Pink and Lily perches on the edge of the Chiltern escarpment, nestling by beech woodlands in the bucolically named hamlet of Parslow’s Hillock. 

Local legend has it that the 18th-century pub’s unusual name stems from a romantic coupling between a butler, Mr Pink, and chambermaid, Miss Lillie. Before establishing the pub, both were employed at nearby Hampden House, which incidentally would later become a location for many Hammer House of Horror shows.

Pink & Lily is a fine country pub in possession of a pleasant garden, spacious conservatory, a reputation for good food and even a games room featuring vintage Space Invaders machines. Combat of a different type is associated with the pub’s most famous regular, Rupert Brooke, the poet, who used frequent walks in the nearby countryside as a muse. Before his death on active service in Greece during the First World War, Brooke celebrated Pink & Lily’s "laughter, and inn-fires" in his poem “The Chilterns”. 

A small gem of a room in the pub, the Brooke Bar, returns the compliment. It remains preserved almost exactly as the poet would have found it in the early 20th century with worn, high-backed settles, sturdy wooden tables, a huge open fireplace and a rug-covered, tiled floor.

Faded photographs of the poet decorate the bar’s walls. One depicts Brooke relaxing with Bloomsbury-set friends by a farm gate, including Virginia Woolf. A rope attached to a hook spans the ceiling: a rare working example of the ancient pub game, ring the bull.

There is excellent walking in the area - the pub stands close to the chalk Whiteleaf Cross, a landmark that provided mystical inspiration for an artistic contemporary of Brooke’s, Paul Nash, the surrealist painter and war artist. Or just take a quiet moment in the bar, enjoy a couple of local real ales (they are currently serving Dry January, 4.2% abv, by the Leighton Buzzard Brewing Co, among others) - and slip back into a prelapsarian English idyll. 

Pink Road, nr Princes Risborough, Bucks HP27 0RJ

01494 489857; pink-lily.com