Church Inn (Saddleworth Brewery), The

Great pub that is extremely atmospheric bith in looks outside and in but also the ambience providing some most excellent value food to accompany the Saddleworth beers

After the excellent beer we had at the Swan Inn-Dobcross, we headed uphill across countryside to a place, appropriately called Uppermill. The old Stone Church is easily visible through trees & across fields, it proved to be a great visual dead-reckoning target.

I had not been here before & was interested to get here for 2 reasons; firstly because of the beautiful setting, but secondly because it is home to the Saddleworth Brewery, & I had not seen any of their beers in the free trade let alone tried them.

The Church Inn is a rather imposing dark stone building, that used to be called the New Inn, which dates from around the 1830’s. It originally had its own brewhouse that had been unused for some 130 years. When the current owners purchased the Church Inn they restarted the brewing tradition, hence the Saddleworth Brewery. It is located in the next door building to the Pub itself – so I suppose you class this place as Brew-Pub. Of note is the fact that the Copper here is still fired by direct flame!

Several of the Saddleworth beers are always available in the Pub, & in fact rarely make it into the Free Trade. I had quick halves of the Saddleworth More (3.8%), Harvest Moon (4.1%) & Shaftbender (5.4%). I also tried someone else’s Pete’s Dragon (4.1%). The first two were good, the Shaftbender was dark & excellent – but the latter was cloudy & wishy- washy, it was the end of the barrel & free, so no complaints really.

The Pub is comprised of a central bar & several smaller rooms that run off the main bar area at all angles. We decided to sit outside at first on the wooden bench tables. Sadly the outside furniture had seen better days & was dilapidated. The sun had gone by now, it became very overcast extremely quickly.

We had planned to take the short walk through the Uppermill Church Graveyard to try the excellent (GBG listed) Cross Keys, a Lees Brewery House (quite rare), but an instantaneous massive downpour rainstorm had us holed up in the Church Inn avoiding a soaking, so we moved into the front lounge had another beer & ordered a Sandwich plus some Chips before we decided to head straight for the next Pub, the Diggle Hotel, Diggle.

Overall, the Church Inn is a charming Pub, set in lovely countryside. Because of its location & Brewery it is very popular with Real Ale Ramblers. I found the Saddleworth beers to be above average overall, extremely competitively priced & the Food was absolutely excellent.

A nice country BrewPub - well worth the walk up the hill.