Hungry Traveller

Is this the best ploughman's lunch in Britain? You be the judge

This pub is tucked into a side road and has no hanging sign.

Hungry Traveller

Ploughman's lunch at the Crown Inn.

By Mark Dapin

Updated April 1, 2025, first published December 3, 2024

Let's face it, the ploughman's lunch isn't a difficult dish to prepare. Classically, it comprises a hunk of bread, a chunk of hard cheese, a dollop of chutney and a pickled onion - everything you might need to get through a hard afternoon tilling the field with your oxen.

So, on a trip to England, I'm surprised to learn that a Somerset pub had won a prize for serving the best ploughman's lunch in the county. I wonder how the award could possibly have been judged. Density of cheese? Weight of bread? Circumference of onion? To find out, I travel to the most English-named village in Somerset, Churchill, to the most English-named pub in Churchill, the Crown Inn, to try the most English dish on the menu, the ploughman's.

It's particularly exciting to sample the dish in the rural west country. What if I come across a genuine ploughman tucking into his eponymous midday meal?

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(Spoiler alert: I don't.)

At a time when many English pubs are suffering, the Crown Inn is thriving. It's tucked into a side road and has no hanging sign, but its cramped and cosy, bare-walled, timber-beamed, low-ceilinged bars are crammed with customers drinking Thatchers cider or Bath Gem ale.

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I order the traditional ploughman's (other options on the menu include a three-cheese version and two different iterations with meat). The bread is light and fresh; the Wookey Hole cave-aged cheddar comes in two generous servings; and the onion is the size of a ping-pong ball. But it's the chutney that makes it special. It could well be that the secret to a great ploughman's lunch is a sweet and chunky, bold and spicy chutney.

Then again, it could be the beer you choose to wash it down with.

I may never know because, despite the internet hype, I can't find any reference to the actual award that the Crown Inn is supposed to have won nor any other award ever given for the best ploughman's lunch.