I rarely visit the little theatre in Chipping Norton without enjoying a drink, or sometimes a meal, in The Chequers next door. This excellent old-fashioned pub was known to me even before the theatre opened in 1975: it was in fact my first port of call on a booze-drenched odyssey a year earlier around the hostelries of Chippy during which former RSC actor John Malcolm told me, with many expletives undeleted, of his and wife Tamara’s bold plans to convert what had formerly been the town’s Salvation Army citadel. Not a place he was likely to have much frequented, I remember thinking as he spoke.

The Chequers had a conversion of its own in 1991 when it was sold by Ind Coope Retail and became the farthest flung outpost of London-based brewery Fuller’s. Reopening the place after tasteful renovation, company chairman Anthony Fuller rightly forecast that people were going to ask: “What’s been done to the pub? Wasn’t it always like this?”

The timeless traditional decor achieved then, with warm fabrics and rugs and a fascinating collection of old pictures, remains largely as it was two decades later — in the bar and front rooms at any rate. Behind, in the conservatory restaurant, there is a more modern feel.

My preference is always for the bar, and it was here a couple of Saturdays ago that Rosemarie and I had a delicious lunch before going next door to watch the young dancers of Ballet Central on their annual tour. There had been no plan to feature the meal in this column, but it was so good that I felt readers deserved to hear of it.

The best part of lunch, for both of us, were our main courses. Mine was a “casserole of local rabbit”. The menu might have added, as landlord Jim Hopcroft told me later, that this rabbit was very local indeed, its passage to the pot having followed a mismatched encounter with a ferret belonging to one of the pub’s customers. This practised killer accounts for the 20-or-so rabbits delivered to The Chequers each week. Pigeons and game in season come courtesy of the various ‘guns’ who use the pub. With rabbits and pigeons both a serious nuisance in the country, it’s a wonder — given the cheap and healthy nutrition both supply — that more use is not made of them.

The Chequers’s appositely named chef Nathan Tuckwell has a super recipe for his rabbit casserole: the two juicy pieces I had — one of them a well-fleshed saddle — tasted wonderful in the rich cider, Dijon mustard and tarragon sauce. Celeriac mashed potato, and fresh carrots and purple sprouting completed a perfect dish.

Rosemary, meanwhile, was sampling with considerable delight Nathan’s pie of the day, which happened to be lamb and potato. A second, chicken and bacon, was also available. Venison and juniper, and steak and London Pride are other favourite fillings.

And I do mean fillings. These are not those pitiful apologies for pies in which pastry lid and the meat beneath are united only moments before serving, but old-fashioned examples of the piemaker’s art in which meat and gravy are completely enclosed in a casing of shortcrust pastry.

In concentrating on the main courses, I must not, of course, dismiss the rest. My starter of Italian-style white bean and vegetable soup, from the blackboard specials, had the fresh flavours of the sunny south, and Rosemarie’s tarted up prawn cocktail, with added crayfish tails, was fine for her. Both of us had good fresh bread.

Having met Kingham cheesemakers Karen and Roger Crudge at a party a few days earlier, I felt I had to try — not for the first time — some of their excellent products: buttery Kingham Green, from cow’s milk, and Sarsden (sheep’s), a similarly hard cheese, rounded the meal off perfectly with some of Nathan’s home-made chutneys and pickled onions. Rosemarie finished with a chocolate brownie so packed with hazelnuts that it had us both singing: “Nuts, whole hay-ay-zlenuts. Cadbury’s take them and they cover them with chocolate.”

My apologies to other customers for what probably seemed a lunatic outburst.