The cultured Yorkshire town is finally getting the pub it deserves, with food – and rooms – proving deservedly popular
Hippy redoubt, artsy hub, unofficial lesbian capital of Britain, ecotown, hill walker's paradise … is there a more Guardian-friendly destination than Hebden Bridge?
The "new" White Lion offers another persuasive reason to visit. This old boozer is now a polished country inn, all log fires, smart designer fabrics and references, in wood panelling and exposed stone, to this Grade II-listed building's 17th-century vintage. In a West Yorkshire town that, unusually, lacks great pubs (the outlying Stubbing Wharf is one real ale beacon), Michael Grimes and Rebekah Grayson's revival of the Lion is clearly welcome. On a rain-lashed Tuesday night, it is packed, the convivial hubbub merging with a discrete background soundtrack of Sinatra and Fitzgerald. Thanks to candles and sensitively distributed lights the whole place is suffused in an amber glow as warm and enticing as a glass of good single malt.
Upstairs, four "boutique" rooms (£125) are finished to a similarly high spec, with rain showers and roll-top baths in chic slate bathrooms. If they lack vivid personality, the building, with its sloping floors and cobbled courtyard overlooking the Hebden river (and, erm, the back of Boots), adds quirky character. There is also a beauty room where Grayson offers treatments, which I didn't try. My face is beyond repair.
Be warned, however, that not all the rooms have been renovated to this standard. The four cottages (£95, dogs welcome) have had a "cosmetic" face-lift, ahead of full renovation in November.
I ended up, as the pub was fully booked, in room five (two doubles in separate rooms), which is a half-finished hotchpotch – its trendy striped carpet at odds with the scruffy old bathroom suite. At £125, for four adults, the room is fair value (breakfast, where high-quality local ingredients shine, is included in the room rate), but at £105 for one couple it's not. Either way, until its January refurb, that room will lag behind. Certain details could be tweaked, too. The underpowered shower takes more than 90 seconds to come warm (a higher pressure boiler is being installed); the toiletries look a bit naff, and why, when you have a good kitchen, spoil a good tea tray (Yorkshire Gold, Taylors tea, ground coffee) with bought-in biscuits?
In that kitchen, chef Simon Marshall has devised a broadly sensible menu of affordable pub dishes with, this being Hebden Bridge, plenty of vegetarian options. There is the occasional unnerving creative flourish (a lasagne of hot-smoked salmon, spinach and mozzarella, topped with garlic bread, is, if not unpleasant, strange), but a bowl, or rather a bucket – "We're known for our portions," laughs Grayson – of rich beef stew topped with a perfect suet dumpling (£10.95) is very tasty. Crisp, spicily bitter, Slightly Foxed, one of five well-kept ales (£3.30), is a good foil.
• For information on Yorkshire, visit yorkshire.com. Travel from Manchester to Hebden Bridge was provided by Northern Rail (northernrail.org)