Real estate business Barkby Group acquires leasehold of Cotswolds pub

Published by

Peter Davison

Real estate business Barkby Group has acquired the leasehold of the Eliot Arms at South Cerney, near Cirencester, which recently underwent a half million-pound makeover by owner Arkell's Brewery.

The acquisition is the latest by the Abingdon-based firm's hospitality division. The group also has interests in real estate development, consumer businesses, and life sciences.

Its portfolio of Cotswolds pubs now consists of nine premises with a total of 75 rooms, including The Bull Hotel in Fairford, Gloucestershire and The Harcourt Arms in Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire.

Charles Dickson, Executive Chairman of Barkby Group, said: "The Eliot Arms' location in the Gloucestershire countryside is highly complementary to our existing portfolio of premium pubs.

"The pub will offer a high-class F&B and accommodation experience, and I very much welcome the site into the Barkby Group."

The pub reopened in October following a £500,000 makeover by Swindon-based brewery and pub owner Arkell's. The 19th century pub has seven rooms.

Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country. An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts. Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.