Restaurant review The Hare & Hounds, The Green, Fulbeck, Lincolnshire.

Everybody knows the English public house is in terrible decline. The emergence of health zealotry and puritanism as a common theme of government, the tyranny of pubcos that sell rent for cheap before squeezing the life out of tenants and cut-price booze in supermarkets are all forces too strong to bear. Last September the reputable Campaign for Real Ale suggested that two pubs close every day.

All of which puts a premium on the remaining members of this endangered species, and never more so than when they are as charming and welcoming as The Hare & Hounds. We must hope that decades from now it will be remembered that such pubs were named for the vigorous pursuits that gave country life its meaning and virtue. Those ways of life are under threat now, too, of course; and everything about this recently and excellently refurbished venue embodies an obstinate defiance of what is perceived, in rural England at least, to be an onslaught from officialdom.

It wasn't always thus. Acting as a kind of fulcrum to the village of Fulbeck in Lincolnshire – a shire to which (due to its location, house prices and landscape) I'm convinced a chunk of my generation will end up moving – this pub used to have a rather Gothic upper level, in which overheard whispers subtracted from each table's privacy. Now, under new management, upstairs has been given a new lease of light, the downstairs has been covered in inoffensive beige-green carpets and paint, and the walls boast portraits depicting the quainter aspects of country living: the blazing hearth, the proud stag, the hare and the hounds.

Sadly, not much can be done about the fact that the pub's best face to the world is hidden from view, in a back alley, while the main road has only the back of the pub and a giant car park in view.

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