"Social Service" Innkeeper

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 18922, 25 January 1936, Page 10

"Social Service" Innkeeper

MISS Isabel MncDonald combines ;i kind hear! wilh a keen sense of the picturesque. In aspiring to become "mine hostess" oi' Vc Okie Plow Inn at. Speen, near High Wycombe, in Buckinghamshire, slie lias two very laudable motives —a wish to find places for the servants formerly employed by her father at No. 10 Downing street, and an ambition to bring back the kindness and comfort and social contact which used to belong to the inns of England. In effect, her aim is to establish herself as a "social service" innkeeper.

She discovered YcOlcle Plow during one of her many visits to Chequers, the lovely retreat of Britain's Prime Ministers in tho.se not - far-distant days when Mr Ramsay MacDonald was head of the Government. At once she was enchanted by its peace and old-world characterdormer windows looking over farstretching fields and woods, its timeblackened, twisting oak beams, its brass and pewter winking in firelight, and its tiny tap-room, where furniture makers from High Wycombe play darts with "gents from London."

Here, she thought, was a treasure

worth having, a haven of delight for nil who relish simplicity and perfect quietude. But the idea that she might ever own it did not then enter her head, sensible though she was of her half-formed plan of running a hostelry on really social service lines. For the time being she remained happy in the role of guest and visitor. Afterwards, when her father stepped down from his high estate, and a sudden departure from No. 10 became inevitable, her memory flashed back to Ye Olde Plow Inn. " Why should I not buy it?" she asked herself. The longer she weighed the proposition the more she liked it. Hence the negotiations for the purchase of the properly. Hence, 100, her joy in being able, a! last, to find a congenial refuge for three or four faithful servants whose dismissal had so much distressed her.