West Berkshire CAMRA Best Community Pub 2010.

Winners - The Castle, Cold Ash.

The West Berkshire branch of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) is delighted to announce the Best Community Pub of 2010 as The Castle in Cold Ash. This is the third year that the branch has run the award and after two years of being "highly recommended" The Castle finally clinched the award. The presentation of the 2010 award forms the highlight of Local Pubs week which runs from 22-28 February in West Berkshire.

Similarly  to previous years, the branch sought out nominations from pubs across the area and invited rank and file pub-goers to submit their deserving pubs to the branch. This was done via ‘Ullage’ (the bimonthly newsletter of West Berkshire CAMRA) and a quarterly mailing to local CAMRA members. As always the branch received numerous nominations from across the area with many worthy and varied reasons. Other pubs which lost out this year, but should still be congratulated for their strong nominations include The Coopers Arms and The Lion in Newbury, The Rising Sun in Stockcross, The Swan at Inkpen and The Bell at Aldworth.

In choosing the Castle as a worthy winner of the Best Community Pub award, West Berkshire CAMRA was impressed that it formed an important community hub and played an integral part of village life in Cold Ash, something that all pubs should strive to do. The pub holds a regular Friday night charity meat raffle with £2800 raised last year. The Christmas raffle also raised over £500. The charities supported include Naomi House, London to Brighton BHF Cycle ride and the Newbury and District talking newspaper. Some of the clubs that call the Castle their home, include the Cold Ash Golf Club and for over 10 years, the Cold Ash Cricket club.

Adrian Bean Chairman of West Berkshire CAMRA said of the Castle: ‘One of the things that particularly struck me was the avalanche of nominations for the Castle. They all picked on a number of similar themes, with various differences due to involvement the person had with the Castle. It was good to see all the support that the pub had given the cricket team over the years, how people took the time to recommend the food supplied by the pub and the fact that pub does so much for the local community. This support includes providing a platform for youngsters to play live music, the welcome for people with dogs and the support for numerous charities.