After more than a decade turning it into 'one of
Gloucestershire’s best pubs', owners Simon and Kate Daws have announced The
Gloucester Old Spot is up for sale.
The couple took over the pub on the A4019, north of Cheltenham, in 2010, and have transformed it into not just an award-winning business but a financially successful one too, with turnover increasing 15 times to £1.25 million a year.
But after 44 years in hospitality and 23 in the pub trade, the couple have announced their retirement, and with it the sale of the historic pub, freehold, for £1.5 million.
Simon Daws said: ‘We are immensely proud of what this team has achieved, having turned what was essentially a drinking pub into a seven-days-a-week food and drink destination with an excellent reputation.
‘We have invested several hundred thousand pounds into the pub, and increased its total capacity to around 290 covers a sitting.
‘If Britain’s best-selling guide, The Good Pub Guide is to be believed The Gloucester Old Spot is among the very best pubs in Cheltenham, and in Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds for that matter, as it is one of only three pubs in this ‘bible’ of the traditional pub world to have a star rating.
‘We have also won the Good Food and Real Ale Awards too.’
The Gloucester Old Spot is also featured in the top '100 UK pub gardens' compiled by Tom Parker-Bowles, with the garden space providing 200 of the 290 covers.
The pub currently has 35 staff and Daws pointed out that the plans to make the nearby junction 10 of the M5 two-ways in 2026, and to build 5,000 houses close by, make it an even better prospect.
‘The future prospects for the pub are excellent,’ he said.
The couple’s career in hospitality began in the 1980s working in hotels and pubs in Cheltenham. They first moved into their own pub in 2000 when they became landlord and landlady of The Royal Oak Inn, Prestbury, then an Enterprise Inns pub.
After transforming that business, they took on a second leasehold on The Gloucester Old Spot, buying the freehold of both pubs in June 2012 before selling The Royal Oak to Butcombe Brewery in 2017 to concentrate on the north Gloucestershire pub.
