Let me start the knew year with an apology: I’m very aware this month’s article is late, and I promise it was a deliberate choice. Today, we’re visiting a place I used to go to around New Year’s Eve every year, so I thought this would be the best time to post about it.
I also want to get a little self-indulgent, if you don’t mind too much. In September 2022, I published my first book—4th Time Lucky, in case you’re curious—and I based the titular tearoom from a place I’d been many times before. I’m sure you can imagine my horror when I discovered the place that inspired my book had closed not long after I’d finally published it.
Let’s take a trip to The Gateway.
Back when it was open, visiting The Gateway was a little like taking a trip back in time. It gives a similar feeling now, albeit not in the same charming way as it used to. Set in the corner of the same courtyard as Herbie’s—which I wrote about previously—The Gateway’s old panel windows overlook the side of the building opposite. This is because it sits in what was an actual gateway, leading to Evesham’s two parish churches.
Yes, there are two. Yes, they’re right next to one another. There are various theories about why this is, but the truth is unfortunately lost to time.
The point I’m trying to make is that, while the view was never particularly interesting, it would block out the modern world and allow The Gateway’s guests to pretend they really had gone back in time for a while. Even the interior, with its old wooden floors, rafters and politely decorative wall clutter, felt like something out of a period piece from the late Victorian era. Peer in through the windows now, though, and you’ll find a dark building decorated with discarded paperwork and piles of somebody’s mail. One of the panels has been broken but it doesn’t look like anybody’s been inside, even with a flat sitting above the tearoom (which, to my knowledge, is occupied).
Personally I was always a fan. One summer, I must have gone to The Gateway every Sunday for a pot of tea and a slice of cake, but upon doing my research I discovered I may have been wearing my Nostalgia Goggles all this time.
Herein lies the real reason this post is late: after reading the reviews on Google, I had to rewrite everything.
The tragedy is that, while I always enjoyed a quiet atmosphere and pleasant time at The Gateway, others weren’t so lucky. I must have had my timing exactly right when I visited.
Reviews cite unpleasant owners and a tangible tension in the atmosphere when they were around. Part of me believes my schedule must have matched up with theirs so that we always missed one another.
I do believe the reviews in question, because other comments match up: there was never anything special about the food, and The Gateway was always a cash-only establishment. Pre-pandemic, this was not an issue, and I understand the pushback against places that don’t take cash at all, but in the modern world cash-only places are always going to struggle on some level. While I never thought the single-person bathroom was particularly dirty, I also used it very rarely, which might explain why I didn’t notice.
The Gateway demonstrates the reason I don’t write reviews on this blog: the chance of two different people visiting a place at different times and having the same experience is astonishingly low. I know it’s hard to be objective when writing about visiting a particular place—generally speaking, you either enjoyed yourself or you didn’t—but there might be something in a recounting that doesn’t come up in a review. For example, you might read about how uncomfortable an establishment is with the owners around, but like the sound of a quiet atmosphere and a cup of tea to escape the modern world for a while.
Knowing what happened to The Gateway, it seems there isn’t much left to say. I suppose most of what I have to say about it is covered in 4th Time Lucky. There was no strange-smelling fire in The Gateway, the lampshades didn’t make strange shapes and the front door didn’t occasionally open onto another land, but if I’m as good a writer as I’d like to think, the strangely nostalgic feel of The Gateway might just have made it across.
Or maybe they really are the same place. Kyle never met the 4th Time Lucky’s owners, either.