Olde Black Bear, Tewkesbury (Black Bear)

A mostly 16th-century timber-framed building. Up to the early 1980s the far left-hand small room was the public bar and it contained a small counter. This room is significant for its magnificent early C17 plastered (leather?) ceiling with 3 rosettes, a dolphin, and a rosette in geometrical surround, also a plastered dragon-beam with a soffit of leaf and rosette. A fairly plain room, the other old fitting is the small Tudor arch stone fireplace. Note the good etched top panels in windows here and elsewhere featuring a bear and also on the two panels in the door to this room. The present bar assumed its position in the mid-1980s and you can see the counter front utilised old panelling from elsewhere in the pub. Until the 1980s there was a second bar in the room on the far right of the pub.

This half-timbered room has a vestibule entrance with leaded glazing and the fitting of note is a very fine 17th-century carved overmantel and surround to a stone fireplace. Huge oak beams and etched windows add to the atmosphere. The near right-hand room with a small Tudor-arch stone fireplace was used as a store prior to the 1980s and was believed to be the site of the original coaching arch. To the near right is another small room with a disused brick fireplace painted pink. In 1999 the pub was extended to the rear left when the owners bought the adjacent Tewkesbury Rugby Club and created a new bar (though this area is largely invisible from the older front part). The pub has therefore undergone a fair degree of change with all the original bar fittings removed in the 1980s, some opening out and new doorways being created.