More pub success as Tandle Hill Tavern is recommended

Following yesterday's news that the New Inn in Castleton is set to appear in the Campaign for Real Ale's good beer guide for a second year running, there is another good news story for Rochdale's pubs today as the Tandle Hill Tavern features in the Telegraph's guide to British pubs.

The Tavern's inclusion marks another highpoint since landlady Michelle Fenton took over the pub in 2006. The following year the pub was named Pub of the Year at the Co-operative Manchester Food and Drink Festival awards.

Since then the awards have kept on coming, with brewery John Willie Lees, also of Middleton, making Ms Fenton their Newcomer of the Year in 2007 before the Tavern was named Cask Pub of the Year in 2008.

The Telegraph's Arthur Taylor describes the Thornham Lane ale house: "The pub is cosy, small, quirky – basically a one-room bar, with another smaller, more private room off to one side. They sell boxes of local eggs from a basket on one corner of the bar. The pub cat dozes alongside. Cuckoo clocks behind the bar display Paris, New York and Thornham time – Thornham is always a few minutes slow.

"There is Lees best bitter, of course, but there are other rarer breeds from the Lees stable – the current seasonal beer, Plum Pudding, Brewers' Dark, a luscious mild, and, as a special treat and tribute from the brewery, the Tavern's very own beer, called Bumpy Lane, a fitting title chosen by the pub's customers.

"The customers are almost entirely local but welcoming, tolerant and utterly at ease with strangers. Quite right. Nirvana is here and it is theirs."