Butchers Arms in Balscote goes forward to regional final
A village pub near Banbury has been voted Oxfordshire Pub of the Year by CAMRA. The Butchers Arms in Balscote, near Wroxton, beat three other finalists put forward by different CAMRA branches, and now goes forward to a regional round of voting with the chance to become National Pub of the Year.
The Butchers Arms is a village local owned by Hook Norton brewery, and two of its beers – typically Hooky and Old Hooky – are served direct from casks behind the bar rather than from hand pumps. It has been a Hook Norton pub since 1878 but was once part of an abattoir, hence the name, and still has an “ice house” in the garden dating from its previous role.
The other pubs that made the Oxfordshire finals are the Broad Face in Abingdon, the Kings Arms in Wantage and the George in Sutton Courtenay. CAMRA members who voted had to visit all four pubs and score them using a range of criteria, with the quality (not quantity) of real ale, cider and perry being the most important. Pub staff’s promotion and knowledge of real ale is also very important, with other categories including cleanliness and hygiene, community focus and atmosphere, service and welcome, style and décor, sympathy with CAMRA’s aims, and overall impression and value.
All four are superb pubs, and the voting was very close with the Butchers Arms just getting ahead in the final reckoning. Any pub that makes it through to the final vote will serve great real ale, and the margins to be declared winner are very fine. In the editor’s own voting he scored all four pubs between 83 and 87, which proves how good all these pubs are.
“Congratulations to the Butchers Arms, and it’s great to see a village pub win through which is clearly held very dear not only in Balscote but also in surrounding villages,” he said. “It’s also good to see a Hook Norton pub take the award, as this is a local brewery dating from 1849 where the boss, James Clarke, is from the sixth generation of the same family that founded it. The Butchers Arms may not be the easiest pub to reach, but anyone who makes the effort will find it very well worth the trip.”
The Butchers Arms is the first pub to be run by landlady Kate Francis Smith, although she previously ran a bar at Warwick University. “Here it is all about community, with the pub, the village hall and the church all connected,” she said. “It’s all about talking to people, getting to know them and hopefully putting a smile on their face.”
The Butchers Arms now joins the Bird in Hand at Princes Risborough and former national champion the Bell Inn at Aldworth – Buckinghamshire and Berkshire Pub of the Year respectively – in a vote to choose the Regional Pub of the Year. One of 12 regional winners will later be crowned National Pub of the Year, an award currently held by shop conversion the Tamworth Tap in Tamworth, Staffordshire.