Davy's Fried Fish and Chip Potato Restaurant

About

No picture of pit village life in the north east is complete without a fish and chip shop. In Edwardian times they thrived in working class areas, drawing in people with a sociable atmosphere full of gossip, popular with women, children and young lads. With evening opening and eat-in areas they were particularly attractive to courting couples in the days before pubs and cinemas welcomed women!

Davy’s Fried Fish Shop has been built in The Pit Village at Beamish in the heart of the community, close to the Methodist chapel and the Board school. It is typical of a type found throughout the region, which often began life as Victorian commercial buildings and were later converted to the new role.

The delicious Beamish fish and chips are fried in two beautiful coal-fired ranges, in real beef dripping, then wrapped in specially printed newspaper, of course! There’s a choice of where to eat too – either in the adjacent Saloon, with scrubbed pine tables and benches or in the sunshine at picnic tables just outside.

Davy’s was named in honour of the fish and chip shop of Brian and Ramsay Davy, which traded in nearby Winlaton Mill for seventy years. The business was set up by their grandfather in 1937, then run by their mother and father before being operated by the brothers themselves until 2007.