Earlier this year, The Saxon Bear in Christchurch, Dorset was taken on by a new owner, Lee Price. The Saxon Bear was the sister pub to the very popular Wight Bear in neighbouring Southbourne. Following the take-over, Lee decided to rename it to The Saxon Bar and our impression seem to be that it’s been a great success.
After initially approaching the current owners, David and Nicola Holland to discuss the ins and outs of opening and running a micropub, they worked out a deal with Lee where he would take over ownership after gaining a few months experience of working and running the Saxon Bear. It would seem the experiment was a success and Lee took over complete ownership at the end of January 2018. Lee’s intention was “to continue to give you all a great customer experience, delivering the best in British Beers, supported by the expert and enthusiastic team”. Starting up a micropub from scratch is a major challenge and we expect that under this agreement it mean Lee could hit the ground running and we’ve been keeping a close eye on what’s happening. We’re happy to report things seem to be going well and the couple of times we’ve been in there was a great selection on. We’ll be sure to call in and provide a detailed review once the dust has settled.
Being fairly local and having had a fair few pints over at the Wight Bear, we here at UK micropubs have been massive fans of the Bear Beer family since they first opened in 2015 and indeed visited the Saxon Bear a couple of times too. I’m sure the decision to let go of the Saxon was not an easy one, however it probably meant David and Nicola can now afford spending more time with the Wight bear, continuing on improving what we believe is one of the best micropubs in the country and who knows what other exciting ventures they might be working on.