A Dark Horse In Settle....

Keeping on my run of Yorkshire-based blogs, I've just been back to the historic Yorkshire Dales market town of Settle recently where I had a walk around the compact town centre and checked out several of the local hostelries, finding some excellent beer in an unlikely setting....

I had been meaning to re-visit Settle for a while, basically because it's always had one or two pubs in the Good Beer Guide that I have never visited and simply because it's been that long since I last been there that I had basically forgotten what the town looked like. Whilst I have been close to the town over the years on countless trips to the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District, it has generally been whilst travelling on the Settle bypass which opened in 1988, resulting in the traffic jams which use to clog up this attractive Dales market town disappearing. Whilst it gets many of tourists and day trippers, such as the numerous bikers who had ridden here when I visited, assembling at the Old Naked Man Cafe in the attractive market square, there was quite a chilled and easy-going ambience and away from the main road and the market square the streets lined with grit stone buildings were quiet.

Settle was mentioned in the Domesday Book and was granted a charter to hold a market in 1250. Daniel Defoe visited the town in the 18th century and said it was "the the capital of an isolated little kingdom of its own surrounded by barren hills." Its location in the Ribble Valley was remote and the old roads comprised pack horse trails and drovers' roads along the hill tops  because the valley bottom was soft and swampy before drainage was introduced. It was 1753 before a turnpike came to Settle when the route frpm Keighley to Kendal was completed, which allowed the transportation of goods to the Leeds Liverpool Canal a few miles way at Gargrave. A textile industry, predominantly cotton spinning, had developed locally, and by 1835 it employed 333 people in five mills within the town.  The railway arrived in the area at the nearby village of Giggleswick in 1847, before arriving in Settle itself in 1875. The Settle-Carlisle railway brought first goods traffic, and then a year later passenger services to the town along with an infrastructure to support it; a goods warehouse, cattle pens, a signal box, and water cranes. 

Settle Railway Station opened in 1875

The Settle-Carlisle Railway has its own story to tell. It was constructed over wild and at times hostile terrain, crossing bleak moorlands, bogs, and deep and wide valleys resulting in several bridges and viaducts, The most famous of these is Ribblehead Viaduct, spanning Batty Moss bog 100 feet below, and is 440 yards long and has 24 arches of 45 feet span each. Its foundations had to be sunk 25ft below the bog level to reach solid rock. Thousands of navvies were employed in its construction and they were housed in shanty towns. some with exotic names like Sebastapol, Jericho, and Belgravia. The largest was called Batty Green, where over 2000 people lived, and 130 horses were stabled, during the building of the section of line from Ribblehead Viaduct and Blea Moor Tunnel - the last tunnel in the country to be dug out entirely by hand - to Dent Station. Batty Green not only consisted of residential huts, but a mission room, day and Sunday Schools, a public library, post office, shops, brickworks, hospital, stables, tramway, and an engine maintenance shed. The construction of the railway sadly saw many lose their lives through accidents or illness, and indeed many inhabitants of the shanty towns died in a smallpox outbreak. The fascinating story of the railway line is even celebrated in music, with the song Settle-Carlisle Railway, written by Mike Donald, providing an excellent summary of its history.

I arrived in Settle early afternoon after catching the train from Halifax to Leeds, and then joining one of the few a day that head up to Carlisle. It was about an hour from Leeds before we arrived at the immaculately-maintained traditional station at Settle, where a lot of work is clearly done to enhance the appearance and facilities by the Friends of the Settle-Carlisle Railway. The station does though have a high railway bridge with a lot of steps, and no lift of course, so for a couple of elderly guys who would have struggled to climb them, a railway official took to them to the far end of the platform and safely led them across the line. I meanwhile set off walking and realised that I hadn't appreciated how close the station was to the town; five minutes walk, if that. And it wasn't far to the first pub either, always a bonus!

It took me less than that to walk to Bar 13, a small bar situated in a former hardware shop on the main road through the town. It has been here since 2005 but from 2023 it has been run by Phil and Lisa Miller, hence the alternative name of Millers Bar. It was quiet when I walked in, with just a couple sat at a table in the rear part of the long, single room. The bar was situated on the left hand side of the room with 4 hand pumps on the counter, behind which stood a tall, thinnish guy with glasses and grey hair. One of the beers on cask was from the local Settle Brewery, and as I hadn't had one from them in a long time, I decided to go for the beer in question, Ribblehead Bitter. Settle Brewery are based on an industrial estate alongside the railway where they have been brewing since 2012. The Ribblehead Bitter is one of the 7 core beers in their range and is a 3.8% traditional bitter, copper in colour, with malty depth and subtle hop flavours. I drunk mine sat at a table opposite the bar and found it pleasant and well-balanced (NBSS 3). I drunk it to the accompaniment of a Radio 2-esque soundtrack which I could have tolerated for the length of time I was there if it had been played at a lower volume and through less tinny-sounding speakers. Sweet dreams are definitely not made of this....

Bar 13

It was only two minutes or so to the next pub, which was situated on the same side of the road as Bar 13. This was the Golden Lion, a popular hotel with 14 rooms which dates from the 17th century when it was built as a coaching inn. Nowadays it is managed by Thwaites, and three of their beers were on the bar when I walked in. There were also a further three beers on hand pump which were from a number of different breweries. One of them was Hetton Pale Ale from Dark Horse Brewery which is named after the Dales village in which the brewery has been based since 2008. The village's main claim to fame though, with all due respect to the brewery, is the serial award-winning, long-standing Michelin-starred Angel, the very mention of which is guaranteed to get foodie types salivating. 

Golden Lion; a bit of a dark horse

Here at the Golden Lion I was served by a smartly-dressed guy who didn't engage as he was in the middle of some how-great-I-am banter with a couple of staff members who were my side of the bar, for all he knew I could have been a inter-galactic warrior or an escaped prisoner. Things took a turn for the better though when I headed into a side room, a bar they call the Lion's Den. I had the pick of tables in what was an empty room save for a couple of female staff members who were sorting things out. I sat at a table facing the TV so I could keep an eye on the cricket where England were making a mess of their reply to New Zealand's first innings score in the 2nd Test at the Oval. A 70's/80's soundtrack was playing over the speakers to which one of the ladies at the bar was singing along to, word for word at the top of her voice, and whilst it might not have been exactly the same tune, she deserves 10 out of 10 for enthusiasm and bringing the place to life! What about the beer, you ask. Well, I wasn't expecting this! It was excellent, in great condition, dry, well-balanced, and refreshing, and one of the best pints I have had in ages. Definitely worth a 4. Well done to the Golden Lion, it shows you can't just make assumptions.  Maybe though move Mr Knowitall off the bar!

I moved on towards the market square. I passed am uplifting mural on a side wall across from an opticians, not something I would have expected to see here. But it was a nice touch, and as I wandered on past the bikes and their leather clad guardians outside the Old Naked Man Cafe I was trying to find the next pub, which was located at the far end of the square,

The Royal Oak is a large open-plan 18th century inn which at one time was owned by Blackburn brewers Duttons. It has an unusual revolving door entrance, whilst inside this former multi-roomed historic pub retains wood-panel effect walls from a makeover from the 1930s.  The bar is slightly to the left as you go in, with a mix of high and low tables  off to the right, and  TV screens located around the room. On the bar there were three hand pumps from which I ordered a half of Moorhouses White Witch which at £2.75 a pop was similar pro rata to the price I had paid in the previous two places. The pub was fairly quiet and somewhat lacking in character, but worth a call if you are in the area.

The Royal Oak and its revolving door

Across the road is the Attermire Cafe Bar which opened in late July 2025. During the day it is a licensed cafe serving draught beers, hot drinks, cakes, ice cream, breakfasts and lunches, whilst on weekend evenings it becomes a small, friendly bar. There were a number of tables to the front, all of them not surprisingly occupied on this pleasant, sunny afternoon, so I was relegated to one of the tables inside what is a bigger interior than it appears from outside. There were two hand pumps on the bar, with one of them serving Hetton Pale Ale which I had enjoyed a little earlier at the Golden Lion. I ordered a pint of it which cost me £4.10 which led me to comment that it was much cheaper than anywhere else I'd been that day. "We like to sell it at a good price" said the pleasant girl who served me. And whilst it wasn't quite as good as the pint I'd had earlier it was still very good indeed (NBSS 3.5). There was a lovely welcoming atmosphere here, with a mix of customers, some on beer like me, others on tea and cake. As I enjoyed my pint an old guy walked in front of the outside tables, tripped, and fell to the ground. Staff, customers, and the odd passer-by rushed to his assistance, with a chair from my table, a glass of water, and much blue roll to stem the resultant nose bleed. He was ok it seemed but was kept company until a car arrived to take him home. The whole episode just made me realise that whilst there seems to be so much social-media fuelled anger and misery these days, people still can be very helpful and supportive of complete strangers when they are in need.

Attermire Cafe Bar

I had about 40 minutes left before my train was due, and one more pub to do. I headed back through the market square which I left via the High Street and just round a slight corner I came to the family-run Talbot Arms, which is Settle's only entry in the 2026 Good Beer Guide. Reputedly the oldest pub in the town, dating back to 1642, with a white-walled exterior. It has a large old stone fireplace but otherwise doesn't look too historic in general one inside. It was busy when I walked in, with the food offer clearly a big draw, with a number of waitresses scurrying past with plates of food almost continuously whilst I was there. I got to the bar where there were five hand pumps serving beers predominantly from Yorkshire-based breweries like Craven, the seemingly ubiquitous Dark Horse, and Taylors. 

Hazy or not?

There was though one from Kirkby Lonsdale Brewery, based a few miles up the road in Cumbria, and this was the one I went for, a 4.1% pale called Hazy IPA. It was pleasant enough if perhaps a little thin, and it was only when I'd almost drunk it that I realised it wasn't hazy at all! And so for that it gets knocked back to a NBSS 2.5! The Talbot was OK, but the one place that I went to that felt full of tourists, and it would probably benefit from a visit on a less busy day to get a proper impression of what it is like.

There was about 15 minutes before my train was due, so I finished my pint, set off walking back to the station, and got there with a few minutes to spare before the train back arrived. It had been an enjoyable afternoon in a pleasant little town with more to it than I realised. And it makes for a great place for a compact little tour. In fact, just like the best beer I had all day, Settle is something of a dark horse....

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