The first fire: Tollgate, Bramber

The first Coal is being built at Tollgate in Bramber, a countryside hotel and members' destination in the Adur Valley, West Sussex, an hour from London.

People have stopped on this stretch of road for something like a thousand years. Bramber Castle stands at one end of the village. The Tollgate itself was a threshold on the old turnpike, a place where travellers paused, paid, and carried on. We like the idea that a restaurant built around a fire should sit somewhere people have always gathered.

What is around us

The South Downs are on the doorstep and so is some of the best produce in England: fish landed along the Sussex coast, lamb from the Downs, vegetables from the valley, and vineyards on the chalk a few miles away. Cooking over coals is a way of doing very little to very good things. Here we will not have to look far for the very good things.

Tollgate is being restored room by room, slowly and properly. Coal is being built alongside it. You can follow the wider story, and register interest in the hotel and its membership, at tollgatesussex.com.

If it is the restaurant you are here for, the list on our front page is the place to be. One email when the fire is lit.