The business, formed in 1991 by Ian Collinson and led by managing director Simon Collinson, has acquired the Rose & Crown in the village of Charlbury, north-west of Oxford, from the Page family, which ran the wet-led pub for four decades.
Simon Collinson told The Morning Advertiser: “Under Tom Ford, it’s always been a very much a beer pub and really focused on cask beer in the past 15 to 20 years at the heart of the village – winning various awards.
“Sadly, Tom passed away and left it with his daughter Nikki Page who has continued to run the pub for the past 18 months to two years. With her father, they had discussed whether they would sell and decided to put it on the market.
“I saw it the same day I heard it was for sale and thought ‘this is the finished article for Oak Taverns’. This is the sort of thing we want to try and get our pubs to over a period of time and this is the first time we just bought a pub like this. Normally, we build them up to these type of businesses, so we were very excited.”
Collinson said the deal was done and within eight weeks it was completed with all the staff still on board and Sue Morris, who runs pubs with Oak Taverns, the site – the company’s 17th – was opened straight away and “never missed a beat”.
Future is bright
Nikki Page wrote on the Rose & Crown’s Facebook page that she was pleased “a lovely, family-run real ale group will be taking over the reins and giving the Rose & Crown the care, attention and investment it needs to serve Charlbury for another 40 years”.
She added: “I’m happy to say that my amazing team of staff will be staying on, so there will be continuity and familiar faces behind the bar – and the beer will keep flowing.
“As you can imagine, this has been a difficult decision, and one I’ve kept quiet to avoid too much speculation or uncertainty. But throughout, the staff, our customers – and the whole community – have been on my mind as I navigated this change.”
Collinson added the pub will have a refurbishment that would be sympathetic and more of an “evolution not revolution” process.
He said: “Charlbury is a fascinating village, we are right between the Bull and the Bell, which are sites that have had millions of pounds in investment with phenomenal chefs and food offers with lots of rooms to rent out. We’re in the middle with eight real hours on the bar and are absolutely keeping it as a wet-only business model. The future is pretty bright for this little village.”
In legals on 18th site
Collinson revealed Oak Taverns has invested a total in excess of £1m on both the Rose & Crown and another site it is in legals for on the outskirts of Banbury, Oxfordshire, called the Three Pigeons.
Collinson said the double acquisition is “the biggest investment we’ve ever done”.
He explained: “We were in the process of buying the Three Pigeons before the Rose & Crown came up so myself and Dave [Collinson, commercial director] got our heads together and wondered if we could we afford both of them – the answer was yes.”
They hope to complete on 8 July with this pub being wet-led again but also has three letting rooms, on which Simon said: “It is a beautiful pub that has got a massive kitchen, which I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with it.” He added it has had an extensive refurbishment.
On the future, he said: “We’re keen to grow the business slowly and steadily. In the perfect world, [we’d buy] one a year but we didn’t buy one last year but we bought the freehold of a lease we had.
“This year, we were supposed to buy one but we’ve ended up buying two. It’s certainly not the right time to start getting involved in more debt. This business is wholly owned by me, my brother and my sister – the family –there’s no outside investment and I think we’d quite like to keep it that way.”
