Bear Inn

After being closed for a year The Bear re-opened June 5th 2021 under landlady and landlord, Ambra Tessitore her husband Giovanni and Giovanni's daughter Alessia. They intend to focus on retaining and enhancing The Bear's traditional 'country pub' atmosphere, with a range of good food and wines on offer, as well as real ales. Giovanni was head chef at The Vines in Black Bourton, Oxfordshire, for seven years, and became well-known for his blend of Italian and traditional English dishes cooked with fresh local ingredients. The Bear Inn is a venerable sixteenth-century building that was originally the village courthouse and assembly room. The open stone jail cells are still in place a few yards from the pub, down the hill on the left. It was first recorded as a pub in 1631 and has been in business ever since. Bisley once boasted nine pubs. There are only two left. At the front of the pub is striking colonnaded loggia and the interior oozes the atmosphere and character of a bygone age—exposed beams and stonework and two huge fireplaces. Jilly Cooper still lives in the village and the Bear is her local. ‘I have a theory that the secret of marital happiness is simple,’ she wrote in 2002. ‘Drink in different pubs to your other half. The Bear is the crème de la crème pub that everybody goes to in my village, but my [late] husband Leo goes to the rival pub, the Stirrup—the hunt meets there each Saturday before the off. Leo feels lost without his regular haunt. A pub is almost like a lover and he would feel terribly guilty if he was being unfaithful and was forced to enter the Bear. The Stirrup's Leo's and the Bear's mine.’ https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2002/apr/14/foodanddrink.features4