29 July 2026

Beer and sandwiches: At the Ram Inn at Firle

This column is our weekly pub review, written by pintsmen, women and children across the nation. Suggestions to letters@newstatesman.co.uk

By New Statesman

The Ram Inn is a large, flinty public house in a gentle farming village, Firle, which ranges peacefully under an escarpment of chalky Sussex downland. The pub has expansive outdoor areas in the summer, and for winter homely creaking wooden interiors with stooping door lintels and fireplaces.

For its good food and historical resonance the Ram is a favourite on the South Downs trail, and frequently appears on best-rural-pub lists. It’s not obscure. But fame ought not to dissuade visitors.

Between the waves

“Katherine Mansfield went after lunch, in the fly from the Ram,” wrote Virginia Woolf on 22 August 1917, after the New Zealand writer came to visit Virginia and her husband, Leonard, in Sussex for a few days. In the preceding afternoons, they had rambled across the South Downs, through the thistledown blustering across corn fields ready for harvest. These hills were important for the Woolfs, who lived in various houses around the same valley, east of Lewes. Through their pathways, and the forests at their feet, Woolf found she could “walk myself serene”.

Firle, as the seat of a landed estate, and the Ram, as a former coach house, were a cultural pivot for the area, from Glynde to the north, to Firle Beacon, from which the downs ripple like waves.

It’s the journey that counts

For all their literary gilding, it’s the fields and bridleways that draw people in. The Ram is not so much a destination in itself, but a place best walked to, and then beyond, as a byway on a grander navigation through the drama of the Sussex vales.

The Ram Inn, Firle, East Sussex

[Further reading: Your guide to cocktail party diplomacy]