New Inn, Willersey, Gloucestershire (updated Sept 2020)

The Cotswolds as an area encompasses several diverse counties, and an equally varied selection of traditional pub games. Aunt Sally is still thriving in Oxfordshire, Indoor Quoits can still occasionally be found in Worcestershire, and Skittles holds sway throughout the whole area, but particularly in Gloucestershire.

It's good to see that quite a few of the more traditional and relatively unspoilt pubs in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds still have fully functioning Skittle Alleys, often doubling as function rooms. Sadly even more have disappeared in recent years, victims of the relentless drive to turn traditional village locals into upmarket 'destination' pubs where the food offering takes precedence over the more social activities of drinking and gaming.

The picturesque Donnington Brewery of Stow on the Wolds has a small pub estate scattered throughout the Cotswolds, and has done far better than most when it comes to retaining their essential pub character. Good value beer, honest wholesome food, and a welcome to visitors and locals alike make Donnington pubs well worth seeking out when enjoying the many other pleasures to be found in this beautiful part of the country.

The New Inn at Willersey is a typical Donnington Brewery pub. Mellow Cotswold stone on the outside, cosy, comfortable, and unpretentious within, with room set aside for the proper pub activities of Darts, Pool, and of course local Gloucestershire Skittles.

Drakes Pride are principally a manufacture of Bowls, but also produce a range of Skittles for the South West game, as well as these durable composite balls in a variety of sizes.

 

September 2020 Update

Some of these early blog posts (this one is from 2012) could be a bit light on pub detail, focussing almost exclusively on what continues to be a rather neglected aspect of the pub, it's traditional games. I remember on this occasion the excellent Skittle Alley was free enough for me to spend time throwing a few wayward balls down on a Sunday afternoon, but in common with most good locals pubs the bar was full to bursting with a typical rural village crowd. A muddy-booted country pursuits crowd for the most part, but also pipe-smokers and Domino rattlers, four-wheel drive farmers and younger farm labourers, even a few gawping tourists like myself. It's a joy to see pubs as busy as this but it can make them a difficult subject to photograph.

Fast forward to the last few days of Summer 2020. Likely to be remembered as the 'Notorious' Summer of 2020, a Summer that hasn't treated pubs at all well! Thankfully most pubs are now open, even if many are not trading too healthily. But the current situation has afforded me the opportunity to return and photograph pubs like this, pubs that are often empty on the inside, most people preferring the relative safety of the garden while the sun still shines. On this occasion we toughed it out inside the pub with a game of Dominoes, while a scattering of locals came and went or played Pool, one of the very few social games we're still allowed to play it seems.

The bar at the New Inn has clearly had a bit of a spruce-up since I was last there, white walls decorated with one or two tasteful graphics. It's still pleasingly sparse inside, as most Donnington Brewery pubs are in my experience. Modernised but still pubby, even when there are people dining in the bar. Given it's location close to the Broadway tourist-trap and on the very edge of the beautiful Cotswolds, this pub would almost certainly have been gentrified to death if it were in less sensitive hands, so whatever you might think of the slightly old-fangled range of beers (I quite like them), the Arkell family deserve high praise for the way they run this tiny pub estate.

Just off the split-level bar is where you'll find the pubs Games Room, still sporting it's Dartboard, as well as a very fine old Bisset Automatic Darts Scorer (left). Practically everywhere that I've been over these past few weeks, the Dartboard has been unceremoniously removed, which probably makes sense in most pubs where the Oche shares space with socially distanced seating areas. But where a pub has a seperate games room as here, and players have their own Darts, I can't see why a game can't be played safely by two sensible adults. As it was, whilst most of the Sunday afternoon crowd were outside, probably discussing the forthcoming shooting season, two sensible adults were enjoying a game on the Pool Table.

A little bit of normal at a strange time for pubs, and a precursor to better times hopefully. It may make things more difficult for my photographic efforts, but a pub like the New Inn looks so much better when it's full to bursting.