Stroud CAMRA

West Central Region

Latest News

  • Stroud CAMRA Monthly Meeting – 8th January 2025

    Reminder that the first monthly meeting of 2025 will be held this Wednesday, 8th January @ 19:30 in the Ale House, Stroud (small back room).

    Of particular focus this month is Stroud CAMRA POTY (Pub of The Year) ballot results and the judging of our other sub-branch POTY, C-POTY (Cider Pub of The Year) & COTY Club of The Year winners to arrive at our County winners.

    The county meeting will have been attended the day before so there will be brief out items from this too.

    We aim to finish at 21:00 so that we can retire to the bar, and discuss all sorts of non beer related trivia (you would be surprised some might say shocked at the subject matter that probably trumps Dull Men’s Club which has 1.4M members).

    All CAMRA members welcome, come along and show your support to Nigel during what is traditionally a lean month for our valued publicans, hope to see you – cheers! 🍺

  • Stroud CAMRA launch the 2025 Good Beer Guide

    Stroud CAMRA launched the 2025 Good Beer Guide on Sunday 29th September at the Carpenters Arms, Westrip, which is in the guide for the first time ever. The weather had smiled on us in previous years, but not this time, and we were forced to conduct proceeding indoors instead of in the pub’s garden with its panoramic views.
    The pub was busy and we had a good turnout of CAMRA members – including one from our neighbouring Dursley branch – to celebrate the publication of the 52nd edition of the UK’s best-selling beer and pub guide, and the Carpenters’ achievement in being listed as one of the best real ale pubs in the area. Many Stroud CAMRA members were involved in visiting and shortlisting pubs for inclusion in the guide, so this was also a celebration of their efforts, culminating in the publication of the end result.
    Owner and licensee Sammie arrived just in time, rolling straight from serving food at the Stroud Five Valleys Meningitis Walk start/finish line. To say she was thrilled to be included in the guide for the first time is an understatement.

    Copies of the Good Beer Guide were available at the launch at the special members’ price of £13 – £4 less than the £16.99 cover price. The 2025 GBG is published in two editions with covers featuring Coronation Street’s The Rovers Return and Emmerdale’s Woolpack. The covers may divide opinion, but there was almost universal relief that the regional format trialled over the last two years has been abandoned in favour of the time honoured county-by-county format.

    The Guide was published by CAMRA on Thursday 26 September. Stroud CAMRA chose these eight pubs to be included in the guide this year:


    Ale House, Stroud
    Carpenters Arms, Westrip
    Crown & Sceptre, Stroud
    Hog, Horsley
    Lord John, Stroud
    Old Lodge Inn, Minchinhampton
    Prince Albert, Rodborough
    Stroud Brewery Tap, Thrupp


    The self-styled ‘beer-lovers’ bible’ is fully revised and updated each year and this year lists 4,500 pubs, bars, and clubs across the United Kingdom that serve the best real
    ale. Each entry contains a short description as well as details of regular and guest beers both local and national.


    The guide is completely independent, with listings based entirely on evaluation by members of CAMRA’s 200-plus local branches.

    The unique breweries section lists every brewery – micro, regional and national that produces real ale in the UK, and their beers. Tasting notes for the beers, compiled by CAMRA-trained tasting teams, are also included.
    Stroud CAMRA (which covers postcodes GL5, GL6 and GL10) has more than 150 members who file reports on the pubs they visit, rating them for the range and quality of their beers, as well as welcome, service and atmosphere. At our monthly meetings, these reports are used to draw up a shortlist of pubs to be visited and evaluated for inclusion in the Good Beer Guide.
    As part of this evaluation process, each shortlisted pub is visited unannounced at least three times a year – in spring, summer and autumn – to see how the pub fares at different seasons, whether the number of beers available varies, and if the temperature and quality is consistent on a hot summer’s day as well as on a cold autumn night.


    Tim Mars
    Pubs Officer, Stroud CAMRA

  • Stroud Cider Pub of the Year 2024 – Carpenters Arms, Westrip

    It’s a double triumph for the Carpenters Arms at Westrip —and a double triumph for the second year on the trot. The pub is not just Stroud CAMRA Cider Pub of the Year but has prevailed in the next round to once again be crowned Gloucestershire CAMRA Cider Pub of the Year.

    Stroud CAMRA presented Sammy McKie, owner and licensee of the Carpenters Arms, with a framed certificate as our Cider Pub of the Year for 2024 on a sunny Saturday afternoon at the end of March. Sammy used the occasion to launch the pub’s very own cider, Rowdy Stroudy, and to plant several apple trees so that in years to come Rowdy Stroudy will be made with apples from trees grown in the pub’s garden.
    It proved a thoroughly enjoyable occasion, the sun shone, the pub was rammed and the garden was very busy, what with a folk band playing inside, a children’s Easter egg hunt and the Easter bunny up to all kinds of mischief outside. To top it all, Sammy held a cider festival to celebrate the award, with 11 bag-in-box ciders and perries on offer from local producers Orchard Revival and Severn Cider – not forgetting Rowdy Stroudy! Tim Andrews from Orchard Revival was on hand to supervise the tree planting and to dispense wisdom and enlightenment on everything to do with apples and pears and the orchards they come from.
    Aside from (officially) the best range of cider in Gloucestershire, for those who preferred other libations there were three real ales and all the usual sedative-hypnotics behind the double-sided bar that serves both the lounge and the public bar.


    The Carpenters now goes forward with our blessing to the next round, to compete with all the other CAMRA south-west branch nominations for the title of South West CAMRA Cider Pub of the Year. And so on, until one pub out of a shortlist of four is crowned national CAMRA Cider Pub of the Year.
    The Carpenters is a whitewashed stonebuilt pub right at the north-western edge of the Cashes Green conurbation, close to the Cotswold Way. It is located on a steep hillside with spectacular and panoramic views over Stroud, from Rodborough Fort to the Bear Hotel and across to Selsley, and all along the valley towards the River Severn.

    Sammy bought the pub in 2019 and has proved a hands-on, energetic and enterprising publican.
    There’s always something going on at the ‘Carps’, whether it’s live music, a quiz, a raffle, Singo Bingo, Let’s Paint, breakfast at the weekend, steak nights, premiership rugby on the widescreen TV, carols at Christmas and even an annual dog show (this year on Saturday 18 May)!
    This is quite a turnaround for the pub, which was once closed and risked being lost to a residential conversion after being declared unviable by so-called ‘industry specialists’.
    It was advertised for sale as an ‘ideal lifestyle purchase [that] would also appeal to purchasers looking to open on restricted hours and benefit from three-bedroom private accommodation in a desirable residential area’. Neon Homes bought the pub and built two houses on part of the car park. It was eventually advertised as for sale freehold at £300,000 or to let on a free-of-tie lease.
    Previously the pub was owned by Punch Taverns with landlord Steve Poulter as their tenant for many years. It was subject to an unsuccessful application by Pubmaster (now part of Punch) for planning permission for conversion to residential in 1997. This was refused by Stroud District Council. Pubmaster went to appeal, the appeal was rejected and the pub was saved from closure.
    Perhaps because of this experience, according to locals Punch sold the pub to landlord Steve Poulter and almost immediately he sold it to Neon Homes and became their tenant. Neon Homes received planning permission to build two houses on part of the car park.
    Perhaps also because of Pubmaster’s experience, Neon Homes then commissioned Plainview Planning to prepare a Future Options document that stated baldly that ‘changes in drinking habits and its peripheral location present a day-to-day challenge to the ability of the pub to stay up and running. A viability report undertaken by industry specialists concludes that the pub is not viable.’

    Plainview Planning fail to mention that despite the pub’s ‘peripheral location’ it is at the edge of a densely built up urban area (Cashes Green) with hundreds of people within walking distance, has stunning views from the garden and happens to be on the Cotswold Way. Surely these are material considerations and trump any ‘viability report’ undertaken by self-styled ‘industry specialists’ hired to conclude that ‘the pub is not viable’? As is the fact that neighbourhoods with pubs are seen as desirable and that is reflected in higher house prices.
    Which just goes to show that it’s not all bad news on the pub front and that a village local in a peripheral location at the edge of an urban area, with a hands-on, energetic and enterprising publican can triumph against the odds over property speculators intent on converting any pubs they get their greedy hands on to residential in order to achieve a higher return.
    That’s surely worth raising a glass to!


    Tim Mars
    Pubs Officer, Stroud CAMRA