The Squareand Compass

The Square and Compass has been run by the Newman family since Charlie and Florence Newman took the tenancy from brewers Strong and Co in 1907, moving from the Red Lion in Wareham to this clifftop village pub above Worth Matravers. The family bought the freehold outright in 1994. Beer and cider are served through a hatch rather than a bar, a layout that has barely changed in a century, and there is no music, television or fruit machine on the premises. The pub is one of only five in the country to have appeared in every edition of CAMRA's Good Beer Guide since it began in 1974. A small museum built into the building displays local fossils and artefacts collected by the current landlord and his father over several decades. The building itself began as a pair of eighteenth-century cottages and is Grade II listed, with views across to Chapman's Pool from the beer garden and coast path close by.