King John's Hunting Lodge, Lacock, Wiltshire
The Hunting Lodge with its Tudor Restaurant / Tea Rooms and secluded garden, has built a reputation for fine traditional cooking. Coffee, light lunches and high cream teas, with recipes old and new. During the winter months the Restaurant/Tea Room boasts a roaring log fire.
Tel 01249 730313
Fax 01249 730725
Margaret Vaughan, Proprietor of King John's Hunting Lodge, was born in Scotland into a large farming family. After schooling, she trained to be a nurse but on marriage returned to farming, becoming a shepherdess to a flock of 350 breeding ewes.
Having two young children, she decided to supplement the family income by cooking lunches at a local pub and her hom cooking and baking soon built up a large clientele.
She decdied to open her own restaurant where she could put her mother's tuition in traditional cookery to more effective use. She opened The Settle restaurant and bakehouse in Frome in 1975 and for over 20 years used her innovative cookery skills to wave the flag for our precious culinary heritage using old and new restaurants.
Margaret's restaurant and bakery have won many awards and have featured in national and intenrational guides, with a star rating from Egon Ronay who considers that 'her cooking remains unique in its field.' Margaret's great love of cooking has taken her into TV and broadcasting media. She is also much in demand for lecturing and demonstrating the art and fun of British cooking.
Margaret sold the restaurant in Frome in 1995 and at King John's Hunting Lodge she continues to offer traditional British cooking in the delightful tearooms.
Margaret Vaughan has written an anthology of recipes based on Jane Austen's book, Pride and Prejudice, called Tea with the Bennets.
The little book was partly written when Margaret first read Pride and Prejudice at school. Being the youngest of seven girls she was drawn to the similarities between her own sisters and the Bennet girls.
Her interest was reawakened when part of the BBC's 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice was filmed in Lacock (which became the little town of Meryton).
Tea with the Bennets is full of interesting teatime recipes, old and new, and is for sale at King Johns' Hunting Lodge.