An historic Severnside pub that was mothballed back in February after centuries of pulling pints has revealed the scale of work it wants to carry out for a new chapter of expanded business.

Standing at an ancient cattle droving point, some 400 metres across the river from Newent, the Old Passage Inn at Arlingham was bought last year by Easton and Alison Hogben of the Quality Inns Group (QIG), the company having recently indicated its plan to reopen by spring 2024. 

QIG also owns 12 other pubs in the county, as well as two caravan parks and three additional pubs in Devon, and their agents, Cheltenham-based Sutton Cox Architects, have asked Stroud District Council for permission to boost car parking and kitchen provision at the pub, which recorded its first landlord, Thomas Fryer, in 1698.

Refurbished living accommodation and a new covered external seating plan also feature in the bid and approval would see more than double the existing car parking allocation, currently 18 spaces, by adding a further 21 bays, while 18 additional square metres of kitchen space would include a new floor for food preparation, albeit with no change to the property's footprint.

Sutton Cox told planners: "given the location of the pub, most people travel by car which means that the existing pub car park to the south is not sufficient to cater for the number of visitors necessary to make the pub a viable business. This means that once the car park is full, visitors will park on the side of the road (which is already a single carriageway). As the pub garden is very large, it seems logical to create additional parking in the area least likely to be used by visitors, ie the east boundary."

For the proposed kitchen upgrade, they said that the "existing kitchen is restricted both in terms of its floor area and its ceiling height. The proposal is therefore: a) to demolish the single storey lean-to structure at the west end of the pub and re-build it as two-storey to create additional floor space for the kitchen; and b) to raise the height of the roof over the kitchen by circa 750mm to create a more usable kitchen space with the extract being located in the roof void, rather than restricting head height in the kitchen."

The bid also includes an intention to remove "the rather functional looking existing pergola on the east side of the pub and replace it with a better designed lean-to roof which will complement and improve the appearance of the pub".

According to pub and brewery expert Geoff Sandles, who compiles the website gloucestershirepubs.co.uk, the site has been a significant landmark in the county's history.

Mr Sandles said: "At the tip of the sweeping ox-bow bend of the River Severn to the west of Arlingham, an inn named The Passage House stood here from at least the 17th century, possibly earlier, forming part of the Arlingham Court Estate.

"In 1802 it was renamed as The Three Mitres, and continued to thrive on the coaching routes (evidenced in Paterson's Roads) and livestock droving route across the river here." At that time, he said the site had coach houses and livery with the equivalent at Newnham on Severn, with passengers changing stage coaches and crossing by ferry."

In the late 1840s, The Three Mitres was demolished and a slightly smaller replacement inn was built on the site - resulting in it being given the name of The New Inn.

After it became known as the Old Passage Inn in 1968, the pub closed in 1999. But when it was repoened a year later, it soon found success as a seafood restaurant: the AA made it Seafood Pub of the Year in 2004, with Cornish native lobsters, sold whole at £32, becoming a 'destination' dish revered in the national press.

● Punchline-Gloucester.com has approached Quality Inns Group for comment.