THE Oxford English Dictionary defines "tithe" as "to grant or pay a tenth of one's goods, especially in support of the church". Scripturally, at least, it still applies. Far from being the tithe that binds, however, most Anglicans appear to believe that a tithe means 10p, placed sacrificially each week into the collection plate whether they can afford it or not.

Thus the Church of England continues on it knees, and on the bones of its ecclesiastical backside.

We mention all this because there is a new place in Northallerton called the Tithe Barn, so named because once it stored wheat and stuff for the ubiquitous Bishop of Durham.

More recently it was a drinking spot called the Tanner Hop - formerly a church hall where admission to the Friday night dance was sixpence - but the premises suffered severe flooding and were bought earlier this year by Market Town Taverns, run by Mr Ian Fozard.

Mr Fozard began in Knaresborough and now has four other places including the Narrow Boat in Skipton, which we can recommend, and the Symposium in Idle, near Bradford, which we've never visited but which offers the chance casually to confirm that there really is an Idle Workmen's Club.

The Stokesley Stockbroker, in attendance last week in Northallerton, also insisted that there is a Loose Women's Institute and that Loose is a suburb of Maidstone, or somewhere similarly salubrious, in Kent.

Whilst this may be something he has picked up from Private Eye, to which for 40 years he has remained faithful, our old friend Mrs Sheila Tock VCO may be able to kill or cure the canard.

The Tithe Barn is described as a "bar/brasserie". The upstairs, no-smoking brasserie opens evenings only, offering starters like poached asparagus tips wrapped in smoked salmon or mushrooms filled with a chicken and garlic mousse on a watercress sauce.

Main courses might be honey roast duck breast on a warm salsa salad with balsamic and raspberry dressing (£9.95) or, for £8.50, wood pigeon breasts wrapped in bacon and fried with baby shallots, mushrooms and apricots.

This was Wednesday lunchtime, market day. "Good food, good ale, good company" promised the sign outside; inside, blessedly, there was no music, no television but next to no customers either. They are missing a treat.

Northallerton has at least three historical claims to fame. It was the site of the Battle of the Standard, was said to be the richest town in the country and "to excel all England for good ale."

Probably it was never so, put about by some C18th spin doctor paid to promote Jacob Smythe's Smoothe. Certainly it's not true now.

The Station is trying hard to promote good real ale and also deserves greater patronage; one or two other places have a lukewarm tilt at it. The Tithe Barn takes it seriously.

The floors are bare, the walls are hung with fliers for good English breweries like Heginbotham's, Threlfall's and Brakspear's; the bar parades six hand pumps mainly from independents like Hambleton, Goose Eye, Phoenix - a delicious autumn ale called Last Leaf - and Caledonian, Edinburgh-based, which tried to spook it with Trick or Treat.

There's also a 50-bottle wine list and substantial menu of bottle conditioned beers which includes Gordon's Scotch Ale (8.6abv) said to have a strong taste of burned toffee and to be "powerful and chewy".

Probably comes in slabs, said the Stockbroker, sardonically.

Lunchtime food includes baguettes (with salad, coleslaw and crisps) from £2.95, a sensibly short selection of hot dishes and a specials board.

The Stockbroker began with a large bowl of mussels - £4.95, wheat beer sauce an alternative to white wine, garlic and cream - arraying the shells so artistically that he supposed that with the addition of a drop of dottle Mr Damien Hirst might flog it for a quarter of a million.

His "Whitby seafood pie" (£5.95) had a whiff of the fish quay about it, too, his "peach beer cream trifle" disappointing only in that he found a peach but precious little evidence of beer.

We'd begun with a substantial bowl of rough pate, £3.95 with salad, bread and "devilled chutney" - the devilled you know, it was splendidly spicy - followed by Cumberland sausage with caramelised onion, leek mash and (excuse the quotation marks) a "rich port gravy".

All that may ethnically qualify a Cumberland sausage these days is that the butcher had a second cousin in Maryport, but these were entirely acceptable, if not from the three-ring circus which traditionally marks out the genre. Both main courses, first rate value, came with a big bowl of very well cooked vegetables.

The best bit, however, remained until last - "Orange Seville marmalade pudding", a chunky delight with piping hot custard that was reminiscent of breakfast - the marmalade, not the custard - at a British Transport Hotel.

We lingered, chatted to Andrew Grimston, the manager - a familiar Northallerton name, Grimston, other generations are into electricals - had one for the iron road.

Whatever the lazy or the lager loutish may say, the sky high message that a place which majors on real ale conveys is that it's striving for excellence. The Tithe Barn achieves it unequivocally, and to the tenth degree.

l The Tithe Barn, 2 Friarage Street, Northallerton, North Yorkshire - near the hospital.( 01609) 778482. Downstairs bar fine for the disabled; brasserie happy hour 6-7pm, three courses £9.95.

Darlington Camra has explained the absence from the 2002 Good Beer Guide (Eating Owt, October 30) of the unbeatable Britannia and of the Quaker Coffee House, the branch pub of the year.

The Brit, says the Camra newsletter, changed hands at "exactly the wrong moment" - they didn't know the new landlady's commitment to real ale - the Quaker was up for sale.

The Britannia's now ruled by Sue Carr. "We had no need to worry," admit the Darlington Drinkers. "The quality and range are great."

LAST week's column wondered the whereabouts of a vineyard in Co Durham, cited in a letter to The Times.

Without exception, kind readers point us towards the walled garden of the Whitworth Hall Hotel, near Spennymoor though, sadly, the fruit now withers on the vine.

Inevitably with a Bonny Bobby Shafto label, Whitworth claimed to be the world's most northerly commercial vineyard, its wine widely available for around £4.50 a bottle in the 1990s.

"Rather dry, a little thin but, by today's standards, very drinkable," recalls Ray Price; "a wonderful bottle," insists Russ Proudfoot in Ferryhill; "entirely palatable," adds John Constable, remembered for the Butterknowle Brewery.

Ray reckons that grape cultivation goes back centuries, suffered during the war ("servants were thin on the ground") but was resurrected around 1945 by Rosa Shafto.

"Sadly," he says, "the last time we were there the vines looked as if they'd been trimmed with a hedge pruner."

The hotel's website suggests that, whilst production is suspended, it may soon resume. It's no longer the case. "Unfortunately," says hotel manager Andrew Cummings, "we are having to concentrate resources elsewhere."

Nor does any remain in the Whitworth cellars. The column was at a do there on Saturday evening. We were obliged to drink real ale instead.

THE much-heralded Clowbeck House, where two months ago we enthused over the exemplary breakfasts, has won yet another award. The hotel near Croft-on-Tees won the Les Routiers North-East B&B title - picked up by owner David Armstrong from Anthony Worrall-Thompson - to add to an overcrowded sideboard. Langley Castle, near Hexham, was named North-East hotel of the year.

....and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew why the orange went to the doctor.

Because he wasn't peeling well.

Published: Tuesday, November 13, 2001