‘I visited one of the UK’s best pubs and didn’t expect this one thing’

Behind all great pubs is a great story – the fabled inns and public houses that dot towns and villages around England have become an immovable part of the country’s cultural fabric, with many passed down from generations and cloistered inside historic, timber-panelled buildings, bearing witness to stories shared over food and drink over hundreds of years.

If the modern-day pub is losing that essential boozy and cluttered charm in the era of gastropubs and digital socialisation, it’s places like The Square and Compass in Dorset that are keeping the spirit alive.

More than anything, the pub – crouched on the edge of a cliff in Worth Matravers, a seaside village made up of limestone cottages and farmhouses – embodies a resistance to change.

It is also the perfect spot for a breath of bracing sea air, washed down with a pint of homemade cider and a pasty – and fussy eaters will be forced to swallow their complaints, with the tiny menu rivalling the minimalism of the building’s low ceilings and cosy compartment rooms.

I visit The Square and Compass early in the new year. It’s a bright, chilly winter’s day and plenty of other people have clearly had the same idea, with a queue stretching out of the narrow passageway and into the sunny beer garden.

Just days after my visit, the pub owned by Charlie Newman, who is the fourth generation of his family to take the helm, is named best in Dorset by The Telegraph, and I’m inclined not only to agree but to rank it among the top in the country.

The best way to approach The Square and Compass is by initially bypassing it and making the somewhat muddy and treacherous trek down to Winspit Quarry before looping round and working up a healthy appetite.

From there, a few minutes of very English queuing will reward you with a rotation of pies or one of three pasties – a classic meat, a cheese, or a new vegan curried option – and a slightly wider choice of drink, with the cider, brewed in a barn around the back, the most popular choice.

The tart, homebrewed cider and tangy cheese pasty I opt for are the perfect accompaniment to a beautiful January afternoon – with the sweeping views of the Jurassic Coast lying below the rock face the cherry on top of an already supremely satisfying sundae.

And if I was surprised by the limited menu options – starkly at odds with the often over-stuffed and complicated menus of pretentious gastropub fame – the boozer’s other unique feature really piqued my interest.

Wander down the darkly lit and tapered corridor to the far end of the small pub, past tiny stonewalled rooms with odds-and-ends furniture and log fireplaces and you’ll find a tacked-on fossil museum, exhibiting the fruits of Charlie’s beach expeditions stretching back over 60 years including Bronze Age tools and remnants of 18th-century shipwrecks found along the Dorset coast.

The small team are working their socks off out of a small nook in the passageway and rosy-cheeked walkers of all ages are delicately navigating the elbows and backpacks of those still waiting to get outside, the bravest of them clutching over-full pints between their fingers.

Besides its clear lack of ostentation, you can imagine customers being impressed with The Square and Compass in almost all time periods and all climates. They could gather inside by the fireplace and listen to the storm raging outside to the tune of one of many live music gigs, or lounge about on the quirky seating, fashioned from Purbeck stone, facing the coastline, and bask in the simple pleasure of a pasty and a pint in the sun.