A Community Pub

The Case is Altered pub is a community-owned, and volunteer-run, pub in the village of Bentley, Suffolk. We normally open from Wednesday evening through to Sunday lunchtime. See our Opening Hours page for details.

The community owned pub in 2014

We have over 200 owners, many of whom live in the village, but some come from all over the world. We bought the pub from Punch Taverns in February 2014, raising the money via a share offer; we had just £200 in the bank at the end of that process! We had a superb response from villagers, who turned up bearing gardening tools, paintbrushes, ladders – and just mucked in; we opened in Easter 2014, with paint still drying in places!

We ran the place just as a drinks pub for a year, purely with volunteer labour, raising money to do the next stage of refurbishment, and open the kitchen. For the next 8 years we were able to offer a food service and also make an ongoing series of renovations to the building, the most significant of which was new bay windows at the front of the pub.

In 2019

More recently, the pandemic years were difficult and forced us to reduce our opening hours and also impacted on our ability to offer food on a regular basis. But we’re still in business!

Recently we celebrated 10 years of operation as a community owned pub.

In 2024

It’s not too late to join our community, either as a shareholder, volunteer, or as a committee member. We are in particular need of more volunteers. Please drop us an email via the contact page, or pop into the pub, and we’ll sort you out.

We look forward to welcoming you to our pub.

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