Water to Daffodils — The Swan With Two Necks in Pendleton, Lancashire
The Swan with Two Necks is a sacred place. Literally—over a pint with the local vicar in the early 2000s, landlady Christine Dilworth organised a drop-in for villagers that couldn’t make it to church, who were offered communion in the function room. Pendleton locals happily took advantage of this hallowed opportunity, until the press printed a photo of the vicar outside the pub.
“The bishop at the time wasn’t happy,” says Steve, Christine’s husband and king of The Swan With Two Neck’s cellar. “And that was that. A shame, really.”
20-odd years later, the welcome is still just as universal. Take off your muddy boots and you’ll find some of the best-kept real ale in the country (and therefore, the world) served in the epitome of a perfect pub. They have the CAMRA awards to prove it, including the coveted National Pub of the Year Award, which they were deservedly rewarded with in 2013.
Photography by Matthew Curtis
But pubs don’t just become perfect on their own. The Dilworth’s know this more than most. They’ve been running The Swan With Two Necks for 37 years, and over that time they’ve seen their fair share of changes sweep over their idyllic little countryside pub.
“We opened at 10.30am on Tuesday the 25th of August, 1987,” Steve says, his sharp memory for exactitudes leaving no room for doubt. “I remember it like it was yesterday. It was yesterday, as far as I’m concerned.”
Of course, Christine had been right by his side for the big moment. “Here I was, only 23, skinny as a rake… I had a blue leather suit on, my hair all permed,” she tells me. “They were mortified!” The village had been dubious about a young couple taking on such a traditional pub and in their interview the pub co. had admitted they’d wanted an older couple to take it on. “It was funny though, after we’d only been here a week it just felt so right.”
What made Steve and Christine’s appearance in Pendleton even more controversial was their chosen roles within the pub. Christine stood pride of place behind the bar, chatting with locals and pouring pints, while Steve worked in the kitchen preparing pub classics.
“I went to catering college, I was a chef,” Steve tells me. “Before The Swan With Two Necks, Christine and I met working at a big hotel in Altrincham—I was the chef there too. We always knew I’d be in the kitchen here, it didn’t seem odd to us.”
Christine is a hoot. She has stories to tell, she’s fun and easy to speak to, and she knows everyone, and exactly what’s going on and when. If she has to drink beer she’ll have a stout (“I only really like dark beer,”) and she takes no nonsense, as displayed when Steve tells his tale about the time The Swan With Two Necks was nearly his final resting place.
“I had a massive heart attack,” he says. “It was the 9th September, 1997, I remember, it was ten-to-nine and I’d just taken a Bass delivery. I walked back into the pub and collapsed at the bottom of the stairs.”
Had his brother-in-law not been there, totally by chance, and had an ambulance not already been on Pendle Road not half a mile away for unrelated reasons, Steve would not have survived.
“I smoked 100 a day back then,” he says. Christine tuts and shakes her head, and looks to me as if to say: what an idiot.
“I haven’t touched one since. Not one.”
***
Pendleton is an impossibly aesthetic village in the heart of the Ribble Valley, somewhere between the ancient hamlet of Wiswell (home of The Freemasons, one of the most lauded gastropubs in the UK) and the farming village of Worston. Cut off from the extensive development of Clitheroe and Whalley by the A59, it remains a vision of the traditional English countryside idyll—right down to the beck running through the centre of the village.
Homes here have rambling roses around their doorways and evergreens are shaped into Elizabethan topiary. It’s usually the first place I spot daffodils pushing through the winter soil. There are goats living in someone’s front garden. You could film Postman Pat here.
““I was everyone’s friend after three months for getting Boddies on.””
Steve and Christine took a long time to decide they wanted to move to Pendleton. Prior to the Swan, they had a town centre pub in nearby Burnley called the Little White Horse on Hammerton Street. Then, The Falcon, with a function room—the Kestrel Suite—and a wine bar called Bojangles, both also in Burnley.
“Our eldest came along, Robert, and there was nowhere for him to play,” Steve tells me. “We looked all over the country for the ideal place, the East Coast, down in Dorset, Southampton, Shropshire… and ended up eight miles over the hill.”
The hill Steve is referring to is Pendle, a monolithic, moor-topped fell that’s part of the very fabric of its surrounding towns and villages; a hill that seems to trap people within its forcefield. Once you’re close to it, you never seem to leave for long. You can see it from the pub—Pendle rises over its beautifully-kept beer garden, looking over the village with a protective air.
Pendle has lore that other hills could only dream of. The famous Pendle Witches once lived at the foot of it, hawking a living from passing traders travelling the long, boggy road between Burnley and Bowland. Quakerism was born here, with George Fox, the religious society’s founder, believing that God had sent him a vision while walking by a spring on its shaded westerly slope.
To those of us who live with Pendle’s presence every day, it is a friend. Its many moods change hourly. Often overcast and shrouded in low-hanging cloud, it warns you that you better not forget your compass. When bright and clear, it calls out for visitors, the energy of a warm sunny day radiating over its ancient facets.
Sometimes, however, I just like to be in its presence, which is why there’s nothing better in the world than sitting out in the Swan With Two Necks’ beer garden, pint of Marble Brewery’s Lagonda settling magnificently on the picnic table, with that uninterrupted view. There’s something about this place.
***
You won’t find a better pint of Roosters’ Baby Faced Assassin anywhere. Steve is extremely proud of his beer and his pub, and he absolutely should be.
He chooses beer that he loves to drink, from breweries he trusts, and breweries he’s discovered who he wants his customers to get to know. When The Swan With Two Necks first opened, he was a Boddingtons man, and that’s exactly what he served.
“I love cask ale, especially Boddingtons. We only had one working handpull when we first opened, and the first beer I tapped was Chesters’ Bitter by Whitbread—we were a tenancy with Whitbred you see” he says. “When I could, I changed that to Boddingtons. I was everyone’s friend after three months for getting Boddies on. It was really, really busy.”
Steve and Christine tried to buy the pub off Whitbread the second year they were there, but the company just wouldn’t sell. One day in 1992, they received a letter welcoming them to the PubMaster group, their only notification that Whitbread had sold their pub. After a while of trying to acclimatise to their new owners, it seemed like they might need to move on again.
“We just didn’t get on with PubMaster,” Steve says. “There was such a reduced selection of beer, restrictions on what we could and couldn’t buy, it was just an aggravation all the time. It just wasn’t what we set out to do.”
PubMaster agreed to talk with them to see how they could help improve the situation. Before the talk was had, Christine and Steve received another letter. It read: ‘Welcome to Jennings.’
Passed back and forth through different PubCos, it’s amazing that The Swan With Two Necks managed to survive. “Jennings were not pleasant to work with,” Steve says. “They came to me and said they had a tenancy agreement with Whitbread through PubMaster, and that they wanted me to change from partial to full-time leasehold with no compensation. And then PubMaster was bought by Cafe Inns, who were even worse.
A pub that had been brought back to life by passionate owners was in danger of taking multiple steps backwards—the three cask lines Steve had restored and installed himself, and his carefully-curated cask line-up would have to go, and the community of beer lovers and CAMRA members who now called the place their local would leave.
“These PubCos are why we lost so many of our experienced, passionate licensees during that time, never to return,” says Steve. “It was pitiful.”
““People don’t see that he’s down there talking to the barrels!””
After considering whether they should even stay in Pendleton after the repeated upheavals, Steve noticed something. A pub in nearby Ribchester called the De Tabley (also known locally as Burlingtons) was being renovated by Cafe Inns—but work had stopped. He knew that Cafe Inns were looking to sell The Swan With Two Necks back to Jennings, and he deduced that they were perhaps short on cash and looking for a quick and easy sale. In April 1998, he hatched a plan in effort to keep their beloved pub.
“As a sitting tender I offered just below the amount Jennings were offering—and we got it,” he tells me. “The sale went through on the Friday and by Monday they were back working on Burlingtons again.” He and Christine chuckle at the memory of finally getting one over on the PubCos.
***
Not just proud of the beers he serves, Steve understands the importance of getting beers in that get people talking, but he sticks to his guns on less popular beers too. There is always a pump serving dark beer—usually either a dark mild, or a porter. He sells White Rat by Ossett Brewery because it’s delicious and it’s always popular, and his Marble choices always sell out.
If you can pick out one thing in the whole of his hospitality career that Steve is most passionate about, it is cellarmanship. He dedicates most of his week to his barrels, lines, and cellar, and you can tell.
“I’m obsessed,” he says, with a shrug and a grin.
“He’s very knowledgeable,” Christine adds, turning his self-deprecation into a compliment. “He works hard at it all. People think you just open the door and switch the lights on and there you go. People don’t see that he’s down there talking to the barrels!”
Steve’s habit of talking to his barrels in the cellar is well known in the local beer scene. He says it makes a huge difference. It keeps them happy.
“I talk to them about all sorts,” he says. “How they are, what sort of temperature they are. Sometimes I sing to them.”
This gentle skill is already being passed on to the next generation. Steve and Christine’s grandson James is three and a half and already loves to spend time in the cellar with grandad, tapping barrels with a mallet and chatting away to the settling beer. Whatever you think about Steve’s barrel conversations though, he’s definitely doing something right. Just ask the regulars.
“From about 2006 a small group of us [CAMRA members] started to do a monthly survey of pubs in different parts of the Ribble Valley. We soon realised what a gem The Swan was and how lucky we were to have it on our patch.” says Martin Snelling, a long-term member of the Ribble Valley CAMRA group and East Lancashire CAMRA, who is keen to stress the sheer quality of The Swan With Two Necks and its people.
“The Ribble Valley group started nominating The Swan for Pub Of The Year because it was head and shoulders above other pubs in our area. Steve knows about beer and he’s passionate about it,” he adds.
Ian Nicol, an active local CAMRA member, says that for he and his wife Chris, who has just retired from being the organiser of the Clitheroe Beer Festival, the best parts of The Swan With Two Necks is its friendly, community spirit. “We like the carol concerts, music evenings, morris dancers, jubilee parties and award presentations. Just having walkers and cyclists coming through on their route to Pendle, passing through and chatting.”
Fellow CAMRA member and local businesswoman Rachel Kay feels the same way. “I love the obvious care and attention that goes into making every visitor feel special and looked after,” she says. “And the ever-changing hand pulls, the sparkling clean loos, delicious food, stunning beer garden…”
It’s a sentiment echoed by everyone who visits this pub. You feel like you’re being welcomed into somewhere special, but it never feels exclusive. You will always be chatted to. You will always feel at home. Creating this experience for customers is incredibly important to Christine, and it starts with getting the beer right.
“When we do go out, sometimes you get a beer and you’re thinking, oh crikey, this looks horrendous,” Christine says, “And then people come here and tell us how well the beer is served and I just feel sorry for the brewers.”
“They put all that work into making their beer, it shouldn’t be rare to serve it properly. It doesn’t stop there at the brewery, you have the responsibility to make sure it’s right in the glass,” she adds.
““I love the obvious care and attention that goes into making every visitor feel special and looked after.””
Being a pub owner and landlord you also have the responsibility to educate and lay down the law too.
“Oh I remember when hazy beer started coming in,” Christine says, throwing her hands up in the air.
“The older generation is convinced it’ll give them a stomach ache,” Steve chimes in. “It’s probably doing you better without all those finings!” He grimaces in faux frustration, but it’s not all a put-on. Being a pub that attracts a vast number of trad ale drinkers each year, this is a regular debate. So what else annoys the always-smiling, mild-mannered Steve?
“Turned around pump clips, that’s a pet hate of yours isn’t it?” says Christine, goading him. “He hates when a beer is off and the pump clip is turned around. Just get rid of it!”
“Also,” he says, warming up. “Food at the bar. Positively no food at the bar. You can smell the vinegar on chips and crisps and it changes how people enjoy their beer, and food smells can even transfer into the beer.”
“And beer not being pulled through,” Christine adds. “The amount of times I’ve been to a bar and it’s an hour and a half into service and the beer tastes off. You just know it’s been sitting in the line all night.”
This attention to detail comes from years of experience, but as both Christine and Steve point out many times, it’s really a skill issue. If people aren’t trained, how are they supposed to know that how they are working is wrong? They’re also well aware that the job really isn’t suited to everyone.
“It’s a way of life, not a job,” Christine says. “Your life is the public, and you are on show. No matter how you’re feeling, you have to come down those stairs and be nice.”
With Steve recently celebrating his 70th birthday with beer-shaped balloons all over the pub (quite unbelievable, he looks at least ten years younger) it’s not as though the idea of retirement hasn’t occurred to both he and Christine. The fact is, however, they just enjoy their life at the centre of their community too much to ever leave it behind. Selfishly, I don’t want them too, either. They genuinely seem to love being the owners of The Swan With Two Necks, and I find their dedication to the pub and each other inspirational.
“Look at this,” Steve says, coming into the bar room once more after rooting around in some cupboard somewhere. He presses an old brass beer barrel O-ring into my hand. It’s turquoise with age. “Our eldest used to spend every minute in the stream outside in his wellies. One day he came in saying ‘Dad! Dad! I’ve found some treasure!’ and it was this E.J Crabtree Brewery barrel seal. That brewery hasn’t existed in Clitheroe for about 100 years.”
He looks as awed by this relic from his pub’s earliest days as he must have been on the day his tiny boy—now a man in his 30s—gave it to him. A man who loves remembering things, who collects antiques and unusual teapots. A man for whom joy comes from everyday miracles like ale, slowly conditioning in the cool of the cellar. A man you really need to buy a pint from and chat to.
