Square & Compass: down the hatch

There's no bar at Dorset's Square & Compass, but manager Kevin Hunt tells Sonya Hook that locals love queuing for drinks, sitting in a corridor and crowding round for table-tennis.

How did I get involved?​

The pub is owned by my friend Charlie Newman and it's been in his family for more than 100 years. He is the fourth generation to run the pub, and really it hasn't changed much over that time. I joined as manager 10 years ago, mainly because Charlie was my friend and he asked me.

I knew the pub and had often helped him out before, so it wasn't unfamiliar to me. And I had some experience of the pub trade, though mainly in restoring pubs.

The pub​

The Square is a lovely pub in Worth Matravers, Swanage, but it's small. One of its best features is a narrow drinking corridor, which leads to two hatches where all the guest ales are drawn from the cask. It's a very traditional feature but it's also unique nowadays. It's a very democratic system — people have to queue up at the hatches to get their beer. There's no bar as such. It means you serve the next in line — not the prettiest.

There are two small rooms off this corridor and that's where people will sit to have their drinks, and their home-made pasties, which is the only food we serve here. We have two types of pasty, which you can buy at the bar with your drink.

The extras​

There is a fossil museum here, which Charlie enjoys. We are on the Jurassic coastline, so fossil enthusiasts are common. His father was a keen fossil collector and after he died Charlie decided to turn part of the pub into a fossil museum. It has meant we've had to sacrifice valuable space in the pub, but at the same time it does appeal to a lot of fossil collectors who visit or live in the area.

It's a traditional pub, so our games reflect this. We have bar skittles, cribbage and shove ha'penny if anyone wants to play it.

We like being quirky and one of our popular features is a table-tennis tournament twice a year. It's mainly popular because the table doesn't quite fit into the room. We remove all the furniture and squash people in, but you can barely get around the table, which adds to the fun really.

Making it work​

The pub has survived because we've kept it simple and not made lots of changes. It won Sawday's Authentic Pub Award this year, which recognises pubs that are "simple, authentic and unadulterated" because they are a "diminishing breed".

We have made some changes in recent years and we do try things out, but we stick to the basic formula of keeping it simple. Many people come here, often through word of mouth, because they can just get a pasty and a pint and enjoy a traditional pub environment.

The recession has had some impact though. Actually it has mainly affected our trade at night as people go out less often, but the daytime trade has probably increased, because we draw in a lot of walkers and holiday-makers. Since the recession there have been more of both of these groups in the area.

To increase our evening trade we have upped the entertainment and music side of things a bit. We have live music here quite often and don't charge for it. We've also had performance poetry evenings here. Space is an issue, but we can seat 50 people and then another 100 or so have to stand outside and look through the windows. I pass round the hat and collect donations from everyone.

We just do what we enjoy and we make sure we do it well. I enjoy music, and I choose stuff that's good but slightly different.

A lot of people who come here are brought by someone who loves the place. They just bring their friends to say "isn't it lovely?".

Our image isn't very highly polished and so the pub doesn't need to be either. We've not needed to spend much on the place over the years really and its scruffy edge suits it.

The drinks offer​

We were lucky to cash in on the cider trend just before it became popular across the country. Charlie was interested in cider so he decided to make his own on the premises and sell it, along with other varieties, and it's been popular since we started doing that, quite a few years ago now. He had a cider barn built so that he could produce his own. That meant investing £15,000 to £20,000, but it's been worth it.

We won an award from the Campaign for Real Ale for our ciders a few years ago.

We're hoping our next step will be to sell our own beer. My girlfriend is learning how to brew beer, so she'll help us out. Our range of ales has always been very popular and we vary them. It's not easy though, as this is such a small pub. We don't have a cellar — all the beers are gravity fed.

We have five or six full-time staff and this increases to 10 in the summer, but subconsciously I think we take on people who have a real interest in this kind of beer, so it means training isn't much of an issue. I do all the conditioning of the beer and so on, but our staff are confident about selling and talking about our beer offer.

Our visitors​

Walking is very popular in this area and it really helps our daytime trade. We also get a lot of climbers here. We do advertise a bit, mainly in local climbing and walking guides and handbooks, and sometimes national ones.

I would say that 60% of the village consists of second homes, so daytime tourist trade is really important, as is our summer trade. We make well over 50% of our annual income during the school holidays, when there will be queues of 20 people at the hatches at a time.

But because it's such a simple place and because we have no catering it means we can serve people pretty quickly. There is no waiter service. You just buy your beer and pasty and move on.

Plans for the future​

We need more storage as it's getting busier, but we have nowhere to store our beer. We've thought about a small extension, but it would eat up our precious outside space, so it needs some careful thought.

The outside space is used for our annual stone-carving festival and sometimes a theatre production is held in marquees we set up, so we do use the space.

I think it would be soul-destroying to run a pub you wouldn't want to visit yourself, so our main aim is to keep it how we like it, but we do also want to grow as a business.

Business background​

The Square & Compass began life as a pair of cottages, with a good view of the English Channel. Around 1776 it became an ale-house, originally known as the Sloop, and was given its current name in 1830.

The Newmans took over in 1907 and during the war years it became a fashionable watering-hole for a creative set of pub-goers. The pub managed to evade the heavy hand of modernism during the 1960s and has retained many of its original features. Current owner Charlie Newman ran the pub for a while before he bought it in 1994.

He opened his fossil museum in 1998. When Kevin Hunt took over the managing of the pub, Charlie took a back-seat role and dedicated himself to manufacturing cider and furthering his fossil collection.

Facts 'n' stats​

Room 1: comfortably sits 16 people

Room 2: comfortably sits 30

Corridor: usually five more people

Outside: lots of people

Turnover 2005: £5,000 per week

Turnover 2010: £6,500 per week

Staff: five or six full-time, rising to 10 in the summer