CHICHESTER PUBS

As a principal market town, many of Chichester's inns and taverns were established at an early date, including those offering hospitality for pilgrims travelling to the cathedral for worship at the thirteenth-century shine of St Richard. Of nearly all the medieval houses - such as the Tabard, the Star, and the Plough - nothing except names in old documents survives. The number of pub closures has escalated since the 1980s. Yet Chichester still has at least three pubs continuously trading since the eighteenth century, while several others now closed retain original architectural features worthy of note. The deregulation of the trade has also seen the emergence of contemporary cafe-bar-pubs, such as the Belle Isle. David Muggleton takes us on a tour of this compact but elegant city, taking in the classical Georgian Ship Hotel, where General Eisenhower stayed in the lead-up to D-Day; the mid-Victorian Four Chesnuts and the mystery of its missing 'T'; the gabled and jettied mock-Tudor Nags Head of 1925; and the Duke & Rye, recently established in a Gothic Revival church building.