-
We are looking forward to welcoming you back on Friday 31st July. For starters. we will be opening on Friday evenings 6:30pm to 10:00pm and Sunday lunchtimes 12pm to 3pm. We will monitor these sessions with a view to opening on further days in the coming weeks. We will not be serving food at present but will let you know as soon as we are in a position to do so. As part of the new guidance we are implementing the following;
- To make your visit to the pub as seamless as possible we ask that you book before arriving, access to this can be found on the top menu.
- There will be a one way system in the pub please adhere to this even using the facilities
- We have sanitising stations located at the entrance and exit of the pub
- On arrival we will help you find your table, we ask that yourdrinks are ordered at your table, unfortunately there will beno sitting or standing at the bar
- We will be collecting personal details of customers visiting us to aid track and tracePayment is to be made by card payment onlyWe ask that you respect the 1m+ social distance at your tables, moving around the premises and using the facilities
- We ask that you limit the toilets to 2 people maximum at a time, sanitising on the way in and out of the toilets
- The requirement that those sharing tables come from no more than 2 separate households (indoors and outdoors) or, for outdoors only, 6 people from any households should be adhered to
- We welcome dogs but only at Garden tables
Our capacity will be greatly reduced to enable us to adhere to the Government guidelines so please ensure you book your table to help manage demand for seats. There may be some seats for walk-ins, but we hope to be busy and suggest you book to avoid disappointment. If you can’t get a table, you will be offered a take-away.
Our garden has been extended into the car park to enable us to seat more people but we cannot guarantee the weather, so it might be useful to bring an umbrella!!!
We would like to say a big thank you to our lovely volunteers who have offered to assist us in these difficult times. If you would like to help please speak to a member of the Committee as we need all the help we can get.
Stay safe and we look forward to welcoming you back on 31st July.The Management Committee
So what do you do when your local village pub closes? Drive to the next village I guess. But what do you do when that one closes too? And what replaces the local pub’s role in the informal village social network? Facebook? I hope not. Recent statistics suggest that 30 pubs are closing in the UK every week and most of them never re-open. Nineteen closed in Essex alone in 2014.
The Cross Inn, Great Bromley, a few miles outside Colchester, on the edge of neighbouring Ardleigh, closed its doors in May 2015. A few locals didn’t want the Cross to become yet another statistic and decided to do something about it. And that’s why this website is here.
In 2015 The Cross Inn, in Great Bromley, Essex closed and was put up for sale as a development opportunity. A group of locals didn’t want to lose the Cross as their village pub so set up “Save the Bromley Cross”. And amazingly, 18 months later, the pub is open again under community ownership.
Over three years later we are a thriving community hub. We have now rebranded and are called The Great Bromley Cross. We are more than a pub, offering the community outreach Post Office and Library services, a coffee shop and a recycling facility. We also host other community activities like the local Friendship Club, a “come and play” music club, a craft club, the WI darts team and twice-yearly village litter picks.