Ruth watson biography series of march

  • David watson
  • Ruth watson young
  • Ruth watson recipes

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    About Me

    I have no idea how I have ended up doing what I did for nearly 40 years – and started doing again last year, namely being a restaurateur.

    I suppose it was because I have a preternaturally keen interest in food, and eating. I suppose that stems from my impoverished, working class mother who spent an absurd proportion of her limited income on food. We had no central heating, car or television, and took no holidays, but we ate the best of seasonal food, from wild salmon to (trays of) peaches.

    When my husband, David, suggested we bought Hintlesham Hall from Robert Carrier I thought he was mad. He told me that if we didn’t buy the Hall I was never to mention the idea of having a restaurant again. So we bought it. We then turned it from a restaurant to a hotel with 33 bedrooms – and an 18-hole golf course.

    I became a food writer because I met Delia and her husband, Michael, at Hintlesham and they liked the newsletters I wrote. They asked me to be a contributing f

  • ruth watson biography series of march

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    Ruth Watson

    English hotelier, restaurateur, broadcaster and food writer

    This article is about the English hotelier. For the New Zealand artist, see Ruth Watson (artist). For the Canadian composer, see Ruth Watson Henderson.

    Ruth Watson is an English hotelier, restaurateur, broadcaster and food writer.

    Early life and career

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    Born in London, Ruth Watson was educated in London and at Westonbirt School in Gloucestershire. After taking up a career in graphic design, she became an inspector for the Good Food Guide.[1]

    In 1983, Watson and her husband David bought Hintlesham Hall in Hintlesham, Suffolk, as a restaurant and cookery school from Robert Carrier,[1] which over six years they turned into a 33-room hotel, with an 18-hole golf course. In 1986 she featured with her family in a Bisto gravy advert. In 1990 they bought the Fox and Goose Inn at Fressingfield, launching it as one of Britain's first gastropubs.[2] In November 1999, Watson

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    This week’s episode of Country House Rescue seems to have found one of the most anonymous houses I have come across, with so little information available about it. Perhaps, however, this is indicative of the rather quiet existence so many smaller country houses do enjoy.  Yet, as Ruth Watson discovers (as she has in so many inherited houses), quiet enjoyment and a commitment to a house and the estate by the owner does not translate into being able to look after it.

    Pen-Y-Lan is situated at the head of a bucolic valley, in the centre of its 500-acre estate, which straddles the English/Welsh border – indeed  Shropshire is at the bottom of the hill and across the river.  The house was originally built in 1690 by one of the founders of Lloyds bank, though as Quakers they suffered extreme persecution in Wales and moved to Birmingham in 1689, so I suspect the house was more a rural retreat or symbolic connection as the family’s main homes were in and around Birmingham