The Top 45 Places to Drink Near The Lygon Arms
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Pewter mugs hang from low beams in this National Trust-owned country pub that has been a fixture of Bretforton village life for centuries. Flagstone floors, roaring fires, and an orchard garden set the scene for real ale, food, and the occasional Morris dancing display. The Great British Pub Awards named it Best Country Pub in 2025, which will surprise no one who has spent an afternoon here working through a pint while someone's dog sleeps by the fire.
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Rank 2. The Wild Rabbit
Modern British Pub
A Cotswolds inn that pulls its produce straight from Daylesford's farm next door, so the bread, cheese, meat, and vegetables have had almost no time to reconsider their life choices before reaching the table. The Wild Rabbit is a gastropub with a log fire, worn leather armchairs, and an open kitchen, and it sits in the Top 50 Gastropubs list. The bar runs artisan ales alongside the kind of lagers nobody is embarrassed to order.
- Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · Sustainable Pub of the Year · Top 50 Gastropubs
- Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #45 · Top 50 Gastropubs
- Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
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Rank 3. The Bull
British Pub
Twin open fires and flagged floors set the tone at this old Cotswold inn turned gastropub, where the kitchen cooks over flame and changes the menu as often as the farmers call. The team behind London's The Pelican came home to Charlbury to restore it, and the terse, ingredient-led dishes feel like the point rather than the ambition. It ranks in the Top 50 Gastropubs and is in the Michelin Guide. Rooms upstairs if you miss the last train.
- Great British Pub Awards 2025 · Best Pub for Food · Great British Pub Awards
- Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #28 · Top 50 Gastropubs
- Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
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A pub whose back garden is so large it hosts its own Oktoberfest, sausage toss included. Inside, The Black Pug is a warren of cosy rooms; outside, there's covered seating, an outdoor bar, and enough room for a grumble of actual pugs, which is both the collective noun and, on any given weekend, an accurate headcount. Pizza Monday, Taco Tuesday, and free kids' meals on Friday keep the locals cycling through. Star Pub of the Year at the Great British Pub Awards 2025.
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Rank 5. The Royal Oak
British Pub
A Grade II-listed former coaching inn in a Cotswolds village, The Royal Oak is a gastropub that has kept its creaky, traditional soul while adding a proper dining room, snugs, and a kitchen that takes seasonal cooking seriously. The menu drifts from pub classics into more ambitious territory without making a fuss about it. Mariella Frostrup once called it a blueprint for the low-key bolthole, which about covers it.
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Rank 6. 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 7. 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 8. The Killingworth Castle
British Pub
A 17th-century stone inn near Blenheim Palace that the owners rescued from dereliction and turned into one of the country's more serious gastropubs. The kitchen bakes its own bread, butchers its own meat, and leans hard on organic sourcing. A bar menu, set lunch, Sunday roast, and tasting menu mean you can pitch your visit anywhere from a quiet pint to a proper occasion. Eight rooms upstairs if you'd rather not drive back to Oxford.
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Rank 9. The Cross
Contemporary British Pub
The dining room here was once a schoolroom, and the hand bell wall lamps haven't let anyone forget it. This Michelin-starred gastropub in a restored Grade II listed inn does serious British cooking, the kind that follows the seasons closely and sources with equal care. The back room looks straight onto the kitchen pass if you want the theatre. The tasting menu is how the kitchen makes its fullest argument.
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Rank 10. The Mason's Arms
British
The bar at this Cotswold gastropub was built from reclaimed church panels, which tells you something about the seriousness of the refurbishment. Flagstone floors, lime plaster walls, and heavily beamed ceilings survived intact, and tankards of Black Velvet now get poured from a 1920s pewter oyster bar. The menu runs from prawn cocktail to something more considered, with a daily blackboard filling the gaps. Sunday roasts, with a few quiet twists, draw a crowd that plans ahead.
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Rank 11. 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.
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A stream runs alongside the terrace at this rural Worcestershire gastropub, which reopened after a full refurbishment and is now drawing people out from the city. The chef came up through Carters of Moseley, and the menu sits comfortably between proper pub food and something a bit more considered: battered haddock sits beside seabass with lobster bisque, and neither feels out of place. Menus turn with the seasons, the interior is cosy, and the desserts reportedly justify the drive.
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Rank 13. 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 14. Couch
Cocktail Bar
Every cocktail on the menu is built around a film, and the menu itself is designed as a picture editorial, so you're reading a small magazine before you drink. This walk-in neighbourhood cocktail bar in Stirchley topped the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list in 2026, which is a long way from a quiet side street in Birmingham. Wednesday to Saturday, 4pm onward, stools at the bar and bistro tables, no reservations required.
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Rank 15. Gong at Shangri-La Hotel
Cocktail Bar
A cocktail bar on the 52nd floor of the Shard, Gŏng has the views you'd expect and, rarer than it sounds at this altitude, cocktails that could hold their own at ground level too. The name comes from "dougong," the interlocking wooden brackets of traditional Chinese architecture, which you can spot supporting the shelves behind the bar. Shangri-La service, an infinity pool next door, and a horizon that covers most of southern England.
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Rank 16. Passing Fancies
Cocktail Bar
The menu changes constantly by design, which is the whole point of the name. This cocktail bar in Digbeth's Custard Factory keeps only twelve drinks on the list at any given time, ranging from fruity and approachable to a rye-walnut-salt number that means business. The room is laid out like a kitchen at a house party, which sounds like a cliche until you're in it. It landed on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list at number sixteen.
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A 14th-century Grade I-listed manor house is the unlikely anchor of this sprawling south Staffordshire pub, where walkers and diners turn up in roughly equal numbers. Inside, art deco lighting and a Blue Room wrapped in a 360-degree mural sit comfortably beside the open kitchen and pizza oven. Outside, there are booths and a bookable teepee. It took Marston's Pub of the Year at the 2025 Great British Pub Awards.
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Rank 19. Lucky7
East Asian Cocktail Bar
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A red-carpeted staircase lifts you out of the four-lane chaos outside and into a hotel bar that has somehow engineered genuine calm, with high ceilings, dim lighting, and soft music doing the heavy lifting. The focal point is a pillar plastered in readable postcards, which is either charming or a lifeline if the conversation has gone quiet. The mood runs warm and a little theatrical, all flickering red tea lights and hushed tones.
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A red door street-level, a flight of stairs down, and suddenly you're in a subterranean bar lined with curtained alcoves that feels like someone converted a Victorian vault because they did. It splits into a restaurant left and a bar right, the latter being the point. Weekend booths require a reservation and a premium, so midweek regulars who know better tend to have the atmosphere to themselves and the tab to prove it.
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Rank 24. Hotel du Vin
Cocktail Bar
Turn left past the hotel lobby and you find yourself in a cocktail lounge where murals of women styled as absinthe bottles share wall space with soft Tuscan colours and a dark oak bar that stretches across two rooms. The champagne-house names painted above them set the tone: this is a place that takes its drinking seriously, even if the Pub du Vin downstairs is right there if you need an exit route.
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Rank 25. The Jekyll and Hyde
Cocktail Bar
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Rank 26. The Victoria
Dive Bar
Patterned carpets and stained glass windows set the tone at this old-school Birmingham pub, which somehow survived the gastropub wave with its character intact. It's a proper boozer on John Bright Street, with a ground-floor bar that feels genuinely lived-in and an upstairs lounge where the programming swings between stand-up comedy, poetry nights, and touring bands depending on the week.
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Rank 28. The Lord Clifden
Dive Bar
The corridor just inside the front door is lined with framed glowing reviews, which is either very confident or very self-aware, and at The Lord Clifden it's probably both. This Jewellery Quarter pub has Banksy prints, exposed brick, beautiful wood panelling, and an enormous beer garden out back. The bar straddles two rooms and the whole thing has the unhurried feel of a proper British boozer. Ale, scampi fries, pub grub.
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Rank 29. Raoul's
Cocktail Bar
A cocktail bar spread across three retro-styled levels in Jericho, Raoul's crams Oxford's largest spirits selection into alcoves behind a surprisingly small bar. Rum is the obsession, including a house blend aged in a Madeira cask, though bourbon runs a close second. The fruit-forward cocktails go through more produce than most grocers shift in a week, and the room has the easy, happy hum of a place that's been doing this for a long time.
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A chrome Buddha greets you at the door of this cocktail lounge and piano bar in the Brindleyplace development, which tells you most of what you need to know about the vibe. Twinkling ceiling lights, comfy chairs, and live piano most nights of the week make it easy to lose track of time. Sink into a seat at the black stone bar and the place wraps around you quickly.
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Rank 31. Bottega
Wine Bar
Rough-hewn planks on the walls and upturned casks for seating set the tone at this pared-down wine bar in Jericho, sitting opposite the rather more famous Raoul's. The list is short and deliberate, with everything available by the glass and tasting notes that actually say something useful. Nothing here is trying to impress you, which, in Oxford, is quietly impressive. Local art fills the gaps on the walls that the wood doesn't.
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Rank 32. Duke of Cambridge
Cocktail Bar
The name sounds like a pub, but the Duke of Cambridge is a cocktail bar, and a proudly self-proclaimed long-standing one at that. A long wooden bar runs one wall, circular booths line the other, and the wide-open floor between them exists for a reason: this place fills up. Happy hour runs four nights a week for four hours, which tells you more about the vibe than any descriptor could.
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Named after the grass squares at the centre of Oxford's college quads, this hotel bar sits on the High Street with arched windows, exposed brick, and a central island bar that draws a steady crowd from opening time onward. It has the loose, lively feel of a brasserie rather than a quiet hotel lounge. A courtyard out back turns it into a genuinely pleasant spot when the weather cooperates, which in Oxford is, statistically, an optimistic bet.
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Rank 36. Grand Café
Coffee
Bentwood chairs, potted palms, and a mosaic-fronted brass bar give this coffee house the air of a Victorian parlour that somehow survived several centuries of undergraduates. Samuel Pepys apparently traced it back to 1650, which makes it older than most of Oxford's excuses. Afternoon tea draws the tourists and the occasional American president; regulars come for coffee and the pleasing sensation of drinking it somewhere that has been around essentially forever.
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Rank 38. Cafe Coco
Cocktail Bar
The oval wooden bar at the center of the room is what orients you first, then the checkerboard tiles, the palms, the terracotta pots, and the tea lights doing their gentle work. This Cowley Road bar runs coffee by day and cocktails by night, with around fifteen classics plus house originals on the menu. The crowd skews local and unhurried, the kind who know the difference between an aperitif and a digestif and order both.
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Rank 39. Kazbar
Moroccan Middle Eastern
Kazbar is a Moroccan-themed bar on Cowley Road where the staff dress like they wandered off a film set and the seating is all low tables piled with cushions and carpets. The L-shaped wooden bar anchors the room, surrounded by wrought iron, orange trees, and sandy walls that commit to the bit without tipping into theme-park territory. The drinks list skews Spanish more than Moroccan, which is either a surprise or a relief depending on your expectations.
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A cocktail bar inside Oxford's grand Macdonald Randolph Hotel, where the wood-panelled walls are lined with photographs of the late actor who played Inspector Morse, the TV detective whose cases were partly filmed here. The show has been off air for decades, which gives the shrine-like décor a pleasantly eccentric quality. Fortunately, the arched ceiling, ornate cornices, and stone fireplace make it a handsome room to drink in regardless.
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Rank 41. Malmaison Oxford
Cocktail Bar
The cocktail bar at Malmaison Oxford is set inside a former Victorian prison, and the original cell bars are still on the windows. The main bar sits on the third floor in what used to be the visitors room, high-ceilinged and dressed in the plush fabrics and dark furniture the Malmaison group does reliably well. It's the kind of place where the surroundings do most of the talking, which is fine, because the surroundings are a jail.
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Rank 42. 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 43. The Boat
Modern British Pub
A Michelin-starred gastropub on a busy A-road outside Lichfield, which is either a strike against it or the whole point, depending on how you feel about destination dining. The kitchen runs a small on-site farm that feeds the menu, with local producers covering the rest, all handled with the kind of precision that makes a venison dish feel considered rather than merely seasonal. The chefs come out to explain what's on the plate, and somehow it doesn't feel annoying.
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Rank 44. Charlton Arms
British Pub
A gastropub sitting right on the River Teme, with terraces that make it nearly impossible to eat inside on a fine day. The menu moves comfortably between French and British without making a fuss about it, running from fish soup with rouille to battered haddock to sticky toffee pudding. Muddy walkers, well-behaved dogs, and people on date nights all seem equally at home here. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.
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Rank 45. The Five Elms
British
A thatched, two-room country pub on the edge of the Chiltern Hills, with log fires, a dog-friendly bar pouring local ales, and a garden with a play park across the road. The kitchen, run by a Masterchef: the Professionals semi-finalist with time in serious European restaurants, sends out cooking that is considerably more ambitious than the setting suggests. Walkers in muddy boots and families share the room without either group seeming to mind.