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The Castle Inn

Mount Pleasant, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire

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The Castle Inn

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The Castle is an 18th century building on top of the hill on the northern side of the town, opposite Christ Church at Mount Pleasant, with good views over the town and nearly as far south as Dorset. It may have benn given its name because of its commanding position.

It is rectangular building of ashlar stone under a slate-covered, almost pyramidal roof and has a tuscan porch on the western side. It probably started life as a private house, but by the 1840s had become a inn. An extension on the street side was added in the 19th century and now houses the bar.

It seems to have started as a pub under George Newman, who was listed in the Tithe Map of 1841 as owner and occupier of the house and was still there in 1875 when it was sold. It belonged to Frome United Breweries in the 1930s and 1940s.

During the 1990s the castle went into a decline, but in 2007 it was purchased by a company called Flatcappers who carried out a thorough redesign by the architect Richard Pedlar and won a CAMRA pub design award. Flatcappers went on to acquire the nearby Bell at Rode in 2009, but this was unsuccessful and soon closed (and is still closed in 2022) and the Battleaxes Inn at Wraxall in Somerset in 2010. In August 2019 Flatcappers was taken over by Country Pubs Group, however, a year later Country Pubs went into administration. The Castle re-opened in 2021, linked to the Seven Stars in Winsley.