We visited an historic Shropshire countryside pub with a colourful past of bears, ghosts and smugglers
This pub's wild past includes a bear pit and a ghostly occupant, but it has become a community hub full of great food and drink.
Delve into the history of the Bear Inn in Hodnet, near Market Drayton, and you'll discover a pub with tales to tell of ghosts, bears and rebellious monks, before being given a new life by the local landowners.
The Bear occupies a prominent position in the village, opposite the Norman church of St Luke’s, and Hodnet Hall Gardens, and has stood on the site since the 16th century.
Beneath the ground, its ancient tunnels and cellars hid rebellious monks from church officials, and provided tax-free smuggling routes for thrifty publicans, while its bear pit was revived in the 1970s when the publican, for a time, brought in two real grizzlies, Madge and Bib, who were later donated to Newquay Zoo.
Another relic of a bygone age is the fabled ghost of Jasper Nielsen, who died nearby of hypothermia after a booze-fuelled tiff with the publican in the late 1500s and who is reported to have made his presence known to revellers on numerous occasions in the proceeding centuries.
It was given new life and a new look by Tom Heber-Percy, whose family own the land, and reopened in July 2021 under the management of Chloe Salmon, a Hodnet native who said she had returned to the village from Henley-on-Thames after seeing the potential of the pub.
