THE PACKHORSE INN
philip turner B I G
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PHILIP TURNER
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village and he noted that the pub ‘had one or two people serving’ and a ‘hundred yard’ long queue of people waiting to get a drink and a hot dog. ‘I thought ‘this is crazy - there has to be a better way of doing this’.’ So when it came up for sale, he bought it. ‘I had this clarity of vision - we were going to turn it into an eightbedroomed destination place.’ The King’s Head became The Packhorse Inn and, as he recalls: ‘It was unbelievably busy from the moment we opened.’ One of the reasons? ‘We got the food right,’ says Philip. ‘Newmarket is all about red meat and red wine and it suited how we were doing things.’ The next acquisition was The Rupert Brooke in Grantchester near Cambridge, a different market altogether. Trying to replicate the Packhorse menu was a learning curve: ‘Our signature dish was coq au vin and we couldn’t have got it more wrong - there were a lot of vegetarians and people who didn’t necessarily drink.’ He continues: ‘We then bought The Northgate, which is where we are now.’ It's a townhouse inn offering interactive kitchen and bar experiences, but then it was ‘two houses run as a bed and breakfast,’ says Philip. ‘It took us two years between buying the building and actually opening it.’
THE CHESTNUT GROUP’S GROWING FAMILY OF INNS WAS ESTABLISHED IN 2012 AND IS THE VISION OF SUFFOLK BORN AND BRED PHILIP TURNER, WHO LEFT HIS CAREER IN THE CITY TO CHAMPION EAST ANGLIA. EMMA OUTTEN MEETS HIM AT THE NORTHGATE IN BURY ST EDMUNDS
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T DOESN’T SOUND as though Philip Turner has any regrets about leaving his 20-year career in the City behind and buying his tired local pub. From that moment when he found out that The King’s Head in Moulton, near Newmarket, was up for sale, it has led him to establishing The Chestnut Group, a family of country – and, latterly, coastal – inns, of which there are nine (and counting). Sitting in a cosy corner of one of them, The Northgate in Bury St Edmunds, the 50 year old is clearly passionate about hospitality in East Anglia. The grandson of a farmer, he grew up in Gislingham on the Norfolk/Suffolk border and went to Old Buckenham Hall School, before studying economics at Bristol University. In his 20s, he had ideas of getting into the food business but ended up working in the banking and hedge fund industry, instead. ‘I lived in London, spent a couple of years in Hong Kong and a little bit of time in New York and had lots of fun but, all of the way through, I felt slightly like a fish out of water,’ says Philip. In the mid-noughties he went through a divorce and met somebody he knew from childhood. ‘I reconnected with Suffolk and East Anglia, and moved back.’ To Moulton, to be precise. He recalls how he and his now wife, Amanda, took friends to see a fireworks display in the
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