Couple who keep the Sun shining

Making a village pub work is a demanding and time-consuming exercise. Location and the people you are liable to draw upon for the business are prime considerations and getting the balance right is extremely important.

Even then you can still do everything you can yet be forced to admit that all your efforts have come to nought. There are still pubs closing at the rate of a handful a week in rural areas right across the UK and plenty of licensees who have left the trade bruised and battered.

Husband and wife Ashley and Kelly McCarthy came to the sleepy, leafy village of Colton ten years ago to take over Ye Olde Sun Inn and earlier this year they received not just any award but were announced as the British Institute of Innkeepers’ Licensees of the Year.

They are no strangers to awards having picked up ten national and regional titles in the past decade but this was the cherry on their cake.

The villages to the south of the A64 that include Bolton Percy, Appleton Roebuck and Colton are quiet, rural backwaters and as there is only a country lane that connects them to the rest of the world they are not usually on the shopping list of those looking for a run out for the day.

When they had been looking for a pub in order that Ashley could produce quality meals and attract fine dining their main attraction had been The Fauconberg Arms in Coxwold. Ashley had worked at the New Inn in Cropton in the North York Moors and felt the Fauconberg would be their idyllic location. They made an offer but didn’t get the pub.

The couple had dismissed Ye Olde Sun Inn when they had first seen it come up because of its sparse accommodation. They had two boys by that time – Joshua and Benjamin – and were living in a four-bedroomed house in Ossett.

Ashley was a lecturer at Thomas Danby College at that time having previously worked at Hazlewood Castle and earlier with Kelly where they first met at the Riverside Farm pub just going out of York on the A19.

“It was crazy really to come from a four-bedroomed property to two bedrooms but we’ve made it work by extending the property and adding rooms. We had looked at pubs in West Yorkshire too, around villages such as Shelley and Shepley, but once I actually stepped into here I just knew it was the right place for us,” says Kelly.

“The atmosphere and everything about it entranced me. I immediately thought that I could live here and wanted to be here. It certainly wasn’t rundown at all and the previous lessees had done a good job. The one thing they had done that we wanted to change though was that they had made it more as a restaurant than a pub. We wanted everyone to come here, those who want a drink and those who want to eat.”

Whereas the previous incumbents had been big on Thai cooking Ashley and Kelly wanted to err more on the side of traditional meals, but very much concentrating on quality. It was the success that the previous tenants had that unnerved Ashley slightly at the start when taking over.

“They’d had a really good name and had obviously developed that reputation over their time here. What I was concerned about was maintaining that level of expectation from customers and not being seen to have failed in their eyes. So we kept with their original menu and then gradually introduced our own meals. My only concern was that I didn’t want to fail, and we haven’t.

“We make a point of using produce from Yorkshire and my two main suppliers of beef, pork and lamb are in Bedale and Kirkby Malzeard. Our potatoes are from an even more local source. They are grown in the next field by Ibbotsons so we have our own Colton potatoes.

“Although I hate the term because of the images it conjures up I would describe us as a gastro pub, but we’re not the kind of place where you go away from it needing another meal on the way home.

“If you want sausage and mash or fish and chips we serve them and if you order steak you get it with sauce, chips and vegetables.”

Ashley and Kelly took over the pub in their own right from Enterprise Inns in 2009 when they bought the freehold. It was the key to everything they have done with the pub since then and why Kelly believes it now carries their stamp throughout.

“We had always wanted to put it back as a pub whilst keeping the reputation for dining. We gave our locals a bar in 2011 and switched to Black Sheep beer.”

Next month their customers will receive even greater choice when Ashley and Kelly launch their first ever beer festival with the support of Pennine Brewing, Wold Top Brewery, Revolutions Brewing and Black Sheep.

“Our trade is now roughly 50/50 from Colton and the surrounding villages and diners from further afield.”

Back in 2005 Ashley and Kelly started a deli around the back but that has since been moved into the pub.

“We started the deli because villagers would come in asking for essentials such as milk or sugar. It’s five miles to the nearest supermarket and we just thought that if the demand was there it made sense to start our own shop.”

And you can stay as well

Another development to the McCarthy enterprise in the village was when they purchased the house next door in 2009 and now offer as holiday accommodation for parties of up to 12.

“It also gets used by people who might be attending conferences in York or Leeds and has proved a good addition. Those who want to have a nice meal or drink can do so in the pub then go back to the house.”

Ashley and Kelly and their three boys, as Liam was born since they moved there, are now very much at the centre of Colton village life – and they love it.