Love Your Local: Easy-to-spot pub serving local food on a constantly changing menu

The Green Dragon is at the south end of Church Stretton on the Ludlow Road and has become a place which provides a warm welcome to locals, campers and walkers alike, both through its warming and locally-produced food and its selection of ales.

The pub was once owned by the Wrekin Brewery of Wellington and an easy place to identify when nearby, adorned in white paint and with plenty of signs outside.

Inside, the pub is a warming and welcoming place which mixes old and new to create a very cosy environment, featuring a warm woodburner for anyone coming out of a brisk walk on the Shropshire Hills

The area about the bar is covered in beer mats, featuring a range of beers from the local area and further afield, and bar stools to take the weight off on top of tiled flooring.

The main seating area features comfortable seating around proper wooden pub tables, while the restaurant area at the far right of the pub is big and airy.

Manager Ashley Kearns has been part of the family-owned pub for 10 years and said it was very much community-focussed, with everyone who worked there from the local area.

He says: "We are a family business and we employ everyone from the local area, so obviously, everyone knows everyone and everyone gets a good experience because we will wait on everyone for table service and we're very focussed on customer service and customer experience.

"We want people to be able to come back and think about always wanting to come here and spend their money as we know people don't have as much of that at the moment.

"We pride ourselves on our customer service and our local knowledge, as everyone is from the local area, so when people are on holiday, they can come here and ask for information about Church Stretton as everyone knows about the village."

The pub itself is a freehold, so Mr Kearns says there's a staple of four beers, as well as a cast of extras when needed.

He tells us: "We have the Black Knight from Ludlow and we use Wye Valley HPA, Ludlow Gold and Wye Valley Butty Bach, which are our staple four beers.

"We have another two pumps that we put ciders on during the summertime as they prove to be very popular and we get a lot of beers in from Shropshire and Staffordshire.

"We do have a few handpulls we will also use during the winter as well."

Mr Kearns said the pub was also becoming very well-known for its food, saying it was what the pub had become very popular for, particularly the burgers.

He adds: "Everything is locally sourced from butchers in Church Stretton and other Shropshire-based places like Ironbridge and we use Wenlock Edge farms and we try to use everything local.

"We tend to change the menu three times a year and we find that the meats are the most popular and one of the staple things we've had for the past year has been the burgers.

"We do a burger menu now which is called Four Girls, which is a tribute to Five Guys as we have four girls in the kitchen, and that has taken off massively, which is great as we wanted to do something that stood out and that's been the burgers."

Mr Kearns says food is one of the things that makes the pub special, as well as the family feeling.

"All the staff and all the customers are great and everyone knows everyone because this is such a family friendly place where our service stands out.

"We are also very community focussed and during Covid, we would do things like go out to people who couldn't go out and make them cream teas, which really helped people who were feeling isolated.

"We also do a lot of charity events, such as MacMillan coffee mornings and we just like to do things to help the community."