Red Lion, Ampney St. Peter

UPDATE 2024  After being closed since 2014, the pub reopened in May 2023, albeit with limited opening hours (currently 5.30pm-10.30pm, Thu, Fri & Sat). Happily, there have been no changes to the pub's historic core.

One of the great unspoilt rural classics. The porch leads to a central corridor. Service is in the small public bar on the right with a ‘2’ on the door but arrangements are not what you would normally expect. This is one of only eight traditional pubs left in the whole of the UK without a bar counter - the others being the Cock, Broom, Bedfordshire; Crooked Billet, Stoke Row, Oxfordshire; North Star, Steventon, Oxfordshire; Tuckers Grave, Faulkland, Somerset; Rose & Crown, Huish Episcopi, Somerset; Kings Head, Laxfield, Suffolk; and Manor Arms, Rushall, West Midlands.

In the bar, you'll find a long bench that creates a narrow area for the licensee to operate in with just a couple of handpumps mounted by the back wall and a stool where they sit..

The last change to the interior of this pub was probably the adding of a red Formica top to one of the shelves in the old cupboards to the left of the narrow area. Note the glass model of the interior of the pub situated on one of the shelves. This quarry tile-floored room has a wooden dado panelling, wall bench seating and a window seat. In the corner is a Minster concrete fireplace, one of 50 added to pubs by Stroud Brewery circa 1950. (There was one in the left hand room but it deteriorated and had to be replaced.) Note the old ring on a piece of string on the wall which operates a bell - this is now only used by customers if glasses are being cleaned in the kitchen.

Across the corridor is another room behind a timber screen forming the left hand wall to the passage. It has simple benches against the wall, a baffle by the door and a brick and wood surround fireplace. In the corridor with its parquet floor is a small sliding hatch through to the ‘servery’ which was the original off sales. It is still used today by customers of the second room when it is too busy in the bar to get served. They slide the hatch and order the beer through it. No new-fangled inside loos here – both the ladies’ and the gents’ are outside on the left.

The pub was bought by Tetbury Brewery Co. in 1851, which was taken over by Stroud Brewery in 1911. The oval inn sign is a thick metal Stroud Brewery one. In the 1950s Stroud Brewery and Cheltenham and Hereford Brewery amalgamated to form West Country Breweries – note the ‘West Country Ales 1760 Best in the West’ ceramic wall sign by the entrance door.