The William IV

The William IV is a country pub in the Surrey Hills, and the address given for it points to the countryside near Haslemere rather than to Guildford itself. That matters if you are planning a journey. Anyone searching for it under Guildford should check the postcode and route before setting off, because this is a rural stretch of Surrey and the difference between the two is a proper drive, not a walk across town.

What it sets out to be is clear enough. The pub's own description is of a refurbished sixteenth-century building with low beams, log fires in the colder months and a garden strung with lights. Seasonal British cooking is the stated approach. Take that as a statement of intent rather than a menu: seasonal means the dishes move, and we have not seen a current list, so ring ahead if there is something specific you are hoping for.

The ££ price band puts it in the middle. This is not a place trading on being cheap, and it is not pitching itself at the special-occasion end either. Expect the sort of bill you would accept for a proper lunch with a drink after a walk, rather than the one you would budget for an anniversary. For most readers that is the useful band — affordable enough to repeat, considered enough to be worth the drive.

It is listed as suiting walks and lunch, and cosy evenings, and those two uses tell you most of what you need. The Surrey Hills are walking country, and a pub positioned there is going to see boots and dogs and people arriving hungry at odd hours. If that is your plan, check the kitchen times, because rural pubs often stop serving between lunch and dinner and the facts here do not tell us the hours. The evening use is the other half of it: fires, beams, a table you are not being hurried out of.

Things worth knowing before you book. It is categorised as a bar with a country pub kitchen, so drinking is part of the point, not an afterthought — worth thinking about who drives. The garden is a selling point in fine weather and will be far less relevant in February. And because it is out in the hills, public transport is unlikely to be straightforward; plan the journey properly.

Its position is honest enough: a countryside pub doing the thing countryside pubs in this part of Surrey do, at a price that does not require an occasion to justify it. Whether it does that well is a question a menu and a visit would answer, and we have neither. What we can say is that it is aimed squarely at people who have spent the morning outdoors and want somewhere warm to sit down.