Rising Sun — the house

The house, room by room

One door off the pavement, two steps up, and from there everything in the building is either bar side or room side of the seam. This page walks it in the order you would walk it.

The house stands on the hill rather than beside it, so the floor you come in on is level with the pavement at the front and above it at the back. That is why the cellar is reached down a hatch behind the counter instead of a flight of outside steps, and why the function room is two steps up rather than upstairs. Nothing in here is a long way from anything else, which is the whole character of the place: you can hear the counter from the snug and the snug from the counter.

Bar side of the seam

The door: Opens inward and swells in wet weather, so it wants a shoulder in February. There is a step up off the pavement and a second one inside the lobby. Anybody who needs a hand over them should say so and one of us will come round the counter.
The counter: Runs along the right-hand wall with the three handpumps at the near end, the till at the far end and the glass shelf behind. Six stools, and the one nearest the door is somebody's.
The window tables: Two of them, in the light, facing down the hill. They take four each, six if the party does not mind elbows. These are the only tables the house will hold back, and only if you ring the morning before.
The snug: Past the fireplace, through the gap in the panelling. Eight seats round three sides, no screen, no speaker. It is the quietest corner in the building and it fills last, which is why it is worth knowing about.
The fireplace: A real one, laid in the morning and lit from the back end of the year onward. It takes an hour to be worth sitting next to and it is damped before the glass goes through at the end of the night.
The cellar hatch: Behind the counter, bolted from above every night. The cellar sits under the bar side, which keeps the lines short and is the reason the list is kept short with them.

Room side of the seam

Two steps and a short landing take you off the bar side. There is one door into the function room and no other way in or out of it, which is what makes the room genuinely private when it is let: nobody passes through on the way to somewhere else.

The room has the table stack at the far end, chairs along the wall, and a serving hatch cut through the seam wall so that drinks for a booking are poured on the bar side and handed through. The hatch stays shut unless the booking asked for it to be open. When it is shut, the room is a room with a door; when it is open, it is part of the house again. That is the only thing the seam actually does, and it does it both ways.

What the room holds depends on the shape you want on the floor, and the arithmetic for that is set out on the function room page along with what the house puts out and what it does not.

Kept as a local, on purpose

The stool at the end of the counter stays free for whoever usually has it, until the hour it is obvious they are not coming.
Dogs come in and lie on the flags. Not on the seats, and not on the window tables when food is out.
The papers live on the end of the bar. Read them and put them back there.
Nothing plays loud enough that you have to raise your voice to be heard across a table. There are no screens in the bar side and there is not going to be one.
Nobody is moved off a table they are still using, booking or no booking. If a party needs the floor to itself, that is what the room across the seam is for.
Children are welcome in the snug and in the function room while food is being served; after that the bar side is for adults.

The company that holds the licence and the lease is DCK HOSPITALITY LIMITED, and its registered office is this address. If you need to write to the house rather than ring it, house@dckhospitality.info is read behind the bar, usually in the afternoon between the lunch trade and the evening. For the room, start at taking a booking, which sets out what goes in the book and what gets confirmed.