Taking wing (From Living Northeast)

Taking wing

12:44pm Tuesday 29th December 2009 in

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The man who grew Durham Pine has been branching out a bit, says Mike Amos.

DON’T the streets of Durham seem to have an awful lot of prison officers these days?

Can’t stir for them. Mind, Durham also seems to have an awful lot of prisons.

Two officers, female and well-spoken, are having lunch at the Fallen Angel. On another table a couple are discussing visiting times, perhaps in the expectation of a redemptive hour with their own little Lucifer.

On a third table, just about the only other one occupied, sits a lone gentleman. You’d bet a BAFTA to a bag of popcorn that he’s an actor, perhaps seeking a captive audience.

That I’m also eating alone isn’t because of some advanced anti-socialness but because amid the eavesdropping and the eggs Benedict there’s a church column to be written. They teach you to multi-skill these days; you get bonus points for it.

The Fallen Angel, opened a year ago, is in Old Elvet, directly opposite the oldest and most iconic of the city’s penal institutions. If a North-East wifie says her old feller’s in Durham, none supposes that he’s gone for a dander round the cathedral.

Fashionably described as “restaurant with rooms”, it was once the Angel pub, later student accommodation, transformed at a cost of around £2m by the entrepreneurial John Marshall, the man who grew Durham Pine.

A gentleman simultaneously engrossing, extravagant and immodest, Marshall grew up in a Durham pit village, remembers seeing the Queen drive past and being given a Dinky model Rolls-Royce as a memento. One day, he vowed, he’d own the real thing.

He spent three years at Houghall Agricultural College, worked as a shepherd and as a gardener, became a vacuum cleaner salesman and, seeing nothing in vacuums, began restoring furniture.

The menu rubric takes up the story.

Durham Pine became Britain’s tenth biggest furniture retailer, 80 shops from Ilfracombe to Inverness, £60m estimated value.

The Fallen Angel is equally idiosyncratic, extravagantly opulent, decidedly different. Ten themed bedrooms range from sci-fi to Cruella de Vil, from cruise liner to Russian bride.

The foyer is Edwardian elegant, the restaurant watched over by an effigy so fearful and so manifestly felonious that, vivified, it should play Magwitch when next they cast Great Expectations.

In the garden, beyond the terrace, sits John Marshall’s Rolls, or perhaps one of them. That story’s in the menu, too. High Roller, indeed.

Eight or nine tables have inlaid old maps of the world.

Chairs are transparent, with little bows on the back. I sit in a corner, next to an old crone – Mrs Magwitch, probably – and to one of those pianos where the keys move automatically, mesmerically, like special effects in a silent movie.

Food’s served from breakfast onwards, afternoon tea £20 for two or an extra £50 for a bottle of champagne, for those feeling light-headed. Snacks, too.

Lunch might be from the “express” menu or a list – £14.95 for two courses, £19.95 for three – that’s