I’ll drink to that…

What was the Crown Pub has been sold and reopened as a Wine Bar & Deli called Bertram Bees. The old establishment closed after disagreements between the owner and the landlord and a lack of investment in the place. It was boarded up and put on the market and as it was in such a bad state some of us feared that it would go the same was as many country pubs and be knocked down and the valuable land be used to put up a block a flats.

But it was bought by a very enterprising and energetic couple who have done a brilliant restoration job on the place and made what I think is a clever marketing strategy of turning it into a wine bar with its own deli counter. This means it should not compete for the same customers as the other more traditional pub across the road, and it takes advantage of the fact that this is quite a wealthy area where customers will go out and buy locally sourced produce even if it means paying a premium.

We have been in several times and there is quite a varied clientele that changes through the day with the mums coming back from taking the kids to the nearby school having their coffee and cake, the lunch time crowd of older couples and business men passing through the village and then the evening crowd enjoying the ambience over a bottle of wine.

The family who have bought it have a connection to the area and are keen to become part of the community by hosting charity car wash, donating to the firework raffle and giving one of the old pub signs to the local history group. He is a builder to and has done a lot of the work on the building and also does work in the village when he is not helping behind the bar or messing about with his two chopper motorbikes.

We hope to book the place for Sue’s 50th birthday next year.