The Top 13 Pubs Near Filthy XIII
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The courtyard is the whole argument: a stage, original artwork, beach huts, and covered heated seating squeezed into a pub garden between Bristol and Bath. The licensee came up as a musician and built the programming around it, so live music runs through the calendar rather than landing as a Friday afterthought. A community local that won Best Pub for Entertainment at the Great British Pub Awards, which tells you what the priorities are.
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Rank 2. Castle Inn
Modern British Pub
Castle Combe has been called the prettiest village in England so many times the locals have stopped blushing, and the Castle Inn sits at its heart looking entirely complicit. It's a proper pub and gastropub with rooms, where the kitchen keeps things rooted in the landscape, Cotswold cider finding its way into the pork, local crab onto the brunch menu. Stone walls, a wood fire, and a bybrook outside doing its photogenic best.
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Rank 3. The Longs Arms
British Pub
A handsome Bath stone gastropub set opposite a medieval church in a quiet Wiltshire village, where the kitchen runs its own smokehouse, bakes its own bread, and churns its own butter and ice cream. You can stop in for a pint and a scotch egg or sit down to a full seasonal menu that swings between dressed scallops and proper sausage and mash without any apparent anxiety about the contradiction.
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A Glastonbury pub named after a tarot card, in an old coaching inn where the menu runs on Middle Eastern instinct and Somerset produce. The chef, of Jordanian heritage and French training, spent summers cooking with her grandmother in Jordan before stints at The Palomar and a Michelin-starred spot in Anglesey shaped her into someone who can make a shish barak feel completely at home in the West Country. The Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand.
- Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · Chef of the Year · Top 50 Gastropubs · Ayesha Kalaji
- Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #42 · Top 50 Gastropubs
- Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
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Rank 5. The Three Horseshoes
British Pub
Margot Henderson of Rochelle Canteen brought her London following to a 17th-century Somerset pub tucked between the village church and the hall. Beamed ceilings, flagstone floors, and open fires set the scene for a daily-changing menu that leans hard on local produce, the kind of cooking that makes cottage pie feel like a considered choice. Ranked 14th on the Top 50 Gastropubs list, it draws visitors who book the five antique-furnished rooms upstairs and stay longer than they planned.
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Rank 6. Black Bear Inn
British Pub
A gastropub in the Gwent countryside where the menu changes every week, following whatever's coming in from local farms and suppliers. Josh and Hannah Byrne run the room while the kitchen turns out seasonal plates that lean into the landscape around them. The wine list favors small European producers working sustainably, which sounds earnest until you taste it. Good spot to land after a walk along the Usk.
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Rank 7. Heathcock
Contemporary British Pub
A champagne and oyster bar tucked into a century-old Llandaff pub is a choice that takes confidence, and the Heathcock pulls it off without blinking. The menu changes twice daily, leans hard into nose-to-tail Welsh cooking, and shares a kitchen philosophy with sibling pub the Hare & Hounds in Aberthin. Sharing plates are the move here. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand, and the kitchen garden out back keeps things seasonal whether you like it or not.
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Rank 8. The Woolpack Inn
British Pub
A vine-covered terrace looks out over Slad Valley, and Laurie Lee, who made this Cotswolds pub famous in "Cider with Rosie," is buried just up the road. The kitchen runs a short, seasonal menu driven by what's growing nearby, with a bar snacks list that takes sardines on toast more seriously than most restaurants take their mains. It ranked fourth on the Top 50 Gastropubs list in 2026.
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Rank 9. Hare & Hounds
Gastropub British Pub
The pub runs its own smallholding, kitchen garden, and bakery, so when the menu changes twice a day at this Welsh gastropub, it's because something was just harvested. Tom Watts-Jones trained at London's Anchor & Hope and brought that ethos to the Vale of Glamorgan, making everything from cultured butter to fresh pasta in-house. Sit in the bar, dining room, or garden for cooking that's unfussy but clearly serious about its ingredients.
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Rank 10. The George
British Pub
A log fire, a pint of Arkell's, and a menu that treats a Sunday roast with the same seriousness as the à la carte: this Cotswolds village pub pulls off the gastropub balancing act without seeming to try. The team behind it brings serious fine-dining experience to a room that still feels like a local, which is harder than it sounds. British seasonal cooking, sourced close to home, changes often enough to give regulars a reason to keep coming back.
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Rank 11. The Bull's Head
Farm-to-fork British Pub
Six miles of single-track road separates this former drovers' inn from Hay-on-Wye, which tells you something about the kind of quiet it keeps. Flagstone floors, slate walls, and open fires set the tone for farm-to-fork pub cooking that runs on meat from the owners' regenerative farm and produce from the surrounding Black Mountains valley. Dogs are welcome in the bar, cabins sit on the grounds, and the Sunday roast is not negotiable.
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Rank 12. The Bell Inn
British
A wood-fired oven does a lot of the heavy lifting at this Cotswolds gastropub, turning out everything from flatbreads to pizza alongside a hearty, classic British menu that changes with the seasons. The kitchen leans on local game dealers, farmers, and fishmongers, so venison faggots sit comfortably next to chicken Milanese. It's the kind of pub where nobody's pretending the food is incidental, and the drinks list makes sure the evening doesn't end too soon.
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Rank 13. The Double Red Duke
Wood-fired British Pub
An old Cotswold coaching inn where the kitchen, built around a wood-fired grill and rotisserie, is literally the room, with a chef's counter facing the embers. The menu runs on sharing plates and leans heavily on beef aged from named farms, cooked over open fire. Sunday lunch draws regulars from the surrounding villages, and Jay Rayner called the deceptively simple menu "a class act." It landed on the Top 50 Gastropubs list for 2026.