The Ploughman's And Terry's

Box Britain Continued

Oct 20, 2024

The Ploughman’s

‘‘I really just wanted a rustic looking lump of farmhouse cheddar and it seems we’ve got something like, is that possibly goats cheese there, or sort of brie or a camembert like cheese, something like Branston pickle in the middle there’’.

Can you find a ploughman’s lunch at a pub in London? In his video on the meal, Tweedy says the dish ‘‘is probably more of a country pub thing’’. The Queen’s Larder in Holborn serves a ploughman’s, albeit with foreign flavour. Their offering features an ‘‘eclectic’’ arrangement of cheeses, and the bread resembles ciabatta. In this video at least, Tweedy did not find a traditional British ploughman’s in the capital. After delving into the history of this meal, Tweedy points to The Harrow Inn in Hampshire as a provider of ‘‘the textbook ploughman’s”. It comprises English farmhouse bread, ‘‘a generous hunk of cheese’’, a simple salad, and some chutney.

A ploughman’s lunch at The Harrow Inn, Hampshire. This image was captured from Tweedy’s video at the location.

A ploughman’s of the kind Tweedy had at the Harrow Inn forms the stock meal on sale at The Ploughman’s inside Box Britain. It contrasts interestingly with Pie and Mash, which it adjoins as the second shop on the second line of the centre’s square formation. Pie and mash is a heavy hot meal perfect on a cold day indoors. Assuming one does not gorge on cheese immoderately, a ploughman’s is a lighter lunch that evokes the countryside and warm sunny days in a beer garden. I much prefer Tweedy’s selection at the Harrow Inn to his purchase at The Queen’s Larder if Branston pickle replaces the chutney he enjoyed in Hampshire.

Whatever your preference, The Ploughman’s offers both Branston pickle and other condiments. Mustard, mustard and horseradish, piccalilli, red onion marmalade, cranberry sauce, and Westmorland chutney are available.

The unit hosts a range of domestic cheeses including cheddar, Shropshire red, red Leicester, Cheshire, Wensleydale, Gloucester, blue varieties, and selections from Scotland, Ireland, and Wales.

Jars and blocks can be bought to take home. The package of each of these products contains a collectable card showing an image of the English countryside.

Drinks on sale include lemonade, cola, ginger beer, sugar-free options of the same, and sparkling water in a variety of flavours. A golden and hoppy house beer is on draught (think Hop House 13) and so is a well balanced cider in the mould of Thatcher’s Haze. The cider is distinguished by its light golden colour, cloudy appearance, baked apple aroma, and a slight hint of sweet raisins. Zero alcohol versions of both these choices are displayed alongside the alcoholic drinks, this is to impress on customers the options of moderating one’s alcohol intake and abstinence.

The Ploughman’s has polished white walls and displays its food under counters at the back of the store and along its perimeter. Pictures of idyllic rural scenes and convivial pub life decorate the shop. Sandwiches that include elements of a ploughman’s are also available. Male staff dress like the man featured in The Ploughman’s beer symbol. Female employees wear a modified, gender appropriate version.

You can expect to spend between £10-15 here.

Terry’s

In a February 2023 article in The Spectator: Why Greggs is the modern-day Lyons’s Corner House, Alec Marsh praises Greggs, its booming sales, and its growth forecast. Their revenues increased by 23 per cent in 2022 to reach £1.51 billion. ‘In 2010 Greggs had around 1,500 outlets in Britain, now it has more than 2,000 and says it’s on course to have 2,500 within two years.’ The current ‘cost of living crisis’ has been well documented. The financial strain felt by large sections of the British public and the cheapness of Gregg’s explains its continuing success.

Greggs Menu Prices UK 2024 — A Gregg’s promotional poster from chinacourtbirmingham.com

Marsh opens his article by confessing that going to Gregg’s is his dirty secret. To the well-heeled crowd at The Spectator, taking a trip there would probably be a source of shame. I only have known of one middle-class person who frequented the bakery, but perhaps economic strains are leading more people through its doors. Marsh says he fed his family of two adults and ‘two nippers’ for £10-12, drinks included.

Marsh attributes a ‘peculiar native Britishness’ to the eatery founded in 1939 by John Gregg in Newcastle: ‘With its roots in Gosforth, after all, Greggs the baker, as it once was, is British to the core. If you took Starbucks and asked a person from the north of England to reinvent it, Greggs is what they would come up with (rather like Morrisons sometimes feels like a northern pastiche of Sainsbury’s). You know it from the moment you see it: Greggs says Sunderland, not Seattle; it smacks of Morpeth, not Manhattan.’

The Gregg’s range of sausage rolls, pasties, steak beaks, sandwiches, baguettes, and sweet options like iced buns, gingerbread men, cherry bakewell muffins, and mince pies all cost a fraction of what you would probably pay for these anywhere else. Their products are characteristic of a typical British bakery and they offer a broad choice, accommodating everything from a light sandwich to a varied pig-out.

Standing next to The Ploughman’s, we have Terry’s, Box Britain’s Gregg’s doppelganger. Terry’s has an almost identical range of products to Gregg's and the same blue, yellow, and white signage The Terry’s shop symbol differs from Gregg’s in its more discreet and elegant style. It is in the mould of the signage of Postcard Teas in Mayfair, London. Just imagine the word Terry’s below and a more understated manifestation of the Gregg’s colour scheme.

At Terry’s, you can feed yourself for £3 and a small family for around £10.

The photo is from https://www.raphaelmartin.co.uk/blog/postcard-teas-9-dering-street-mayfair

Said frontage complements the Box Britain aesthetic, this will be discussed in further detail as the shape of the leisure and retail complex becomes fuller.

The Heritage Site

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