Following the insolvency of the Barge Inn Community Project and the pub’s temporary closure, Honeystreet’s famous ‘croppie’ pub reopened on Friday evening (December 14.)
New tenants Derren Heath and Amanda Swindell were welcomed by a good crowd pleased to see their pub back in business.
Ian McIvor, a director of Honeystreet Ales, the pub’s owners, was there with his wife Julia to give the new-look bar some final tweaks. He has signed a five year tenancy with Derren and Amanda and they will still be serving the popular beers from Honeystreet Ales and have kept on the pub’s chef.
The pub has a striking new re-fit in rich and earthy tones appropriate to the pub’s heritage and listed building status. Original features have been uncovered and restored and walls are now decorated in artwork created by Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones.
Derren and Amanda are delighted to be taking over as tenants of this iconic pub: “We fell under the Barge’s spell ten years ago and have been camping here every summer since. We have always wanted to run the pub and jumped at the opportunity to take it on. It’s an amazing place with very loyal customers and is a much loved institution.”
Asked about the new design, Ian McIvor explained: “Regulars have been complaining to me for the last two years that they didn’t like the last makeover, carried out by the previous community group tenants. To be honest, it was uninspiring and bland, more care home chic than rock ’n‘ roll.”
Sitting right on the bank of the Kennet and Avon canal, The Barge is renowned as a meeting place for people interested in crop circles and UFO’s. Visitors from all over the world converge on the pub in summer, with many staying at the pub’s campsite.
Some of the pub’s regulars live on narrow-boats along the canal and groups of them have been working on the pub’s re-fit. To mark the reopening, they’ve put a Sarsen standing stone in the newly landscaped canal-side beer garden.
There to drink the health of the reopening were Cynthia and Ted Basford who, after some ill-health, sold their Dorset home and now live on a narrow-boat. Their new open-air life obviously suits them and they may well be celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary next year at The Barge.
Also there was Terry who’s been living in the area for thirteen years. He’s a ‘rural graffiti artist’ and hopes the pub will get back to being a place where artists, musicians and writers can come together to discuss their work.
Honeystreet Ales are continuing work on the oak barn they are funding. It is being built next to the pub using some timbers from the Victorian barn that was attached to the pub.
Officially known as ‘The Barefoot’, but affectionately dubbed ‘The Shed’, it will open next summer as an ‘inspirational space for the arts’.
The Barge Inn has its own unique range of beers and ciders with names such as Croppie, ‘Alien Abduction’, Area 51 and Away with the Fairies.
As one of those glad to be back in the pub told Marlborough News Online, it has been suggested the pub should be renamed “The Circle Makers’ Arms.”