Two years after opening its first award-winning gastro-pub in Blackburn, the Seafood Pub Company is taking its tally to a total of four North West pub restaurants.

The newest arrives on 6 June when managing director Joycelyn Neve re-launches ‘The Fenwick’ in the Lune Valley of Claughton near Lancaster.

And in August the fourth will be added when a refurbished ‘Farmers Arms’ opens at Great Eccleston north of Preston on the Garstang to Blackpool road.

They join the ‘Assheton Arms’ at Downham which Joycelyn took over after famously beating TV celebrity chef Marco Pierre White to win the lease from Lord and Lady Clitheroe.

All four pubs are deliberately different and will develop their own individual identities within the Seafood Pub Company’s core values in food, drink, atmosphere and surroundings.

“The brand allows each of our pubs to build its own character,” says Joycelyn, “but everything centres on providing customers with consistent qualities that they know to expect - exceptional quality locally sourced food, cooked and presented in the straightforward uncomplicated way that it should be.

“That’s the reputation we have earned, that’s why people enjoy us, and that’s why we have grown from Blackburn in the south, eastward to Downham in the Ribble Valley, northward to Claughton in the Forest of Bowland and, soon, westward to Great Eccleston on the Fylde.”

The refurbished ‘Fenwick’ on the main A683 road at Claughton was in the national limelight back in 2007 when, as the ‘Fenwick Arms’, it featured in Gordon Ramsay’s ‘Kitchen Nightmares’ TV series. Now the 250 year-old country inn is reinvented as the most atmospheric of the Seafood Pub Company venues with large open fires, low-beamed ceilings, oak planked floors and a signature range of food that spans from Lancashire classics to world food dishes.

The Seafood Pub Company is now a recognised combination of Joycelyn, her father Chris Neve and international chef Antony Shirley.

Chris, whose trusted Fleetwood-based fish wholesale operation became a national by-word for quality, ensures the freshest ‘same day’ catches can be on the plate within hours. But it’s not exclusively seafood. The best Lancashire suppliers provide the freshest meat, poultry and game.

That’s where Antony Shirley comes in. The former sous chef at Harvey Nichols in Knightsbridge, head chef at Panacea in Manchester and at Raffles in the West Indies, was instrumental in setting up and opening the first Piccolinos restaurant and later served as their UK development chef.

His style of cooking is behind a string of awards that began when The Oyster & Otter was named the ‘Great British Pub Awards Best Food Pub’ only weeks before the Assheton Arms completed the double with the ‘Lancashire Life Dining Pub of the Year’ title and was a finalist in the Top 50 Gastro Pubs ‘Best Newcomer’ category.