So why did I go? Because the menu read well. There’s a musty smell in the arches, which they’ve probably been trying to banish for years, and weird images of Venice hung on the walls, as if bought by the yard. It feels like the kind of place you would visit for nothing more ambitious than a pint and a panini. The real issue is that when you arrive, the brightly lit bar space matches the website. The homepage carries a garish clip art advert for a New Year’s Eve event, which looks like it’s targeted at the cast of Towie. The gallery page has a “critical error” message, perhaps because the management haven’t bothered looking at their own website recently. The site includes an earnest message apologising for the fact that you can’t come in wearing fancy dress, which meant I had to put away my Morticia Addams outfit. (For sake of doubt the gravy here does not start as a powder.) It begins with an eye-achingly awful website. All that wonderful food is served in a space that feels like the kind of pub where the chips arrive in a mini chip-pan fryer and the gravy starts as a powder. ‘Crunch your way through to a sticky, dark mess of outrageously rich lamb stew’: ‘72 hour’ lamb hotpot. The whole place is deliciously seasoned with history. The whole site was listed in 1970, and in 1984 the subterranean space, reached via smoothed flagstone steps and arched doorways like you’re entering a hobbit house, was converted into a pub. Presumably it occupied the building above, for those swearing off the booze stored in the cellars below. Intriguingly, it says the address was at the same time also the site of a temperance hotel. By the mid-19th century, they were home to a wine and spirits merchants called Richard Hinde & Co who remained there until at least 1934. By the door, scribbled up on a blackboard, is a timeline, detailing their construction in 1688. It’s a trio of ancient, brick-lined arched cellars dating back, as the name suggests, to the 17th century. The restaurant’s setting, that frame, is potentially gorgeous. It’s tempting to describe Merchants 1688 in Lancaster as a lovely painting in a terrible frame, but that doesn’t quite do the job.

Old fashioned drink clip art