Changes are coming for a historic pub restaurant in Bracknell as its owning company undergoes a business transformation.
The Downshire Arms in Downshire Way dates back to the 1700s when it served as a coaching inn, later becoming a traditional pub.
For around a decade, it operated as a Beefeater steak restaurant alongside the Twin Bridges Premier Inn hotel, with hospitality company Whitbread owning both brands.
But the Beefeater was permanently closed by Whitbread in July last year, among more than 200 restaurants as the company is undertaking a restructuring process.
Now the Downshire Arms could be transformed to create space for 12 new hotel rooms in a plan submitted to Bracknell Forest Council.
The project also involves transforming the Beefeater space into a guest’s drinking and dining area, with associated kitchen and back-of-house facilities.
Justifying the project, a planning agent wrote: “Premier Inn has identified a considerable demand for additional budget hotel accommodation in this location.
“It is also acting to reconfigure the restaurant proposition to ensure it best fits the needs of customers in select locations.
“This proposal for additional bedrooms and an adjusted restaurant proposition would meet Premier Inn’s operational requirements at the location and go some way in helping to address this bedroom demand.
“The proposal is to rebuild part of the existing restaurant to provide 12
additional hotel bedrooms on one floor.”
Each room would come with a double-bed, a bathroom and a circular table with two seats.
The restaurant would have 35 seats, retaining 65 per cent of those previously provided at the Beefeater.
As the Downshire Arms is locally listed, a heritage assessment was conducted to determine the impacts it could have on the historic pub building.
The agent from Walsingham Planning argued the changes would benefit the heritage of the pub.
Their submission states: “The proposed works would offer modest benefit to the immediate setting of the locally listed building through removal of the later, single-storey additions from the south.
“The proposed works would not affect the historic core of the locally listed building, which is to be retained as a breakfast area serving hotel guests only.
“No physical works to this portion of the building are proposed with the existing internal arrangement of the building retained for breakfast use.
“As such its remaining significance would be conserved by the proposals.”
The works to the pub are currently under consideration by Bracknell Forest Council.
You can view the application by typing reference 25/00399/FUL into the council’s planning portal.
A similar project to convert the Weather Vane pub owned by Whitbread into 17 rooms for the Premier Inn central hotel in Bracknell was approved last September.
