I bought my cottage in Great Ouseburn because it was a short walk to an award winning pub

The pub in their village of Great Ouseburn, 14 miles, north west of York, was an award-winning establishment called the Crown Inn. However, it changed hands a few times over the years and closed in 2015.

The building was converted into a house and the village was without a pub for five years. “When it closed it felt like the village mood changed,” says Den. “It was a great loss.”

In 2020, Matthew Gath, managing director of Yorvik Homes, who had lived in Great Ouseburn, for over 25 years, decided to build a new village pub as part of a new housing development.

The Lime Tree Inn, which is now one of the Michelin Guide’s top 10 pubs in Yorkshire, has cemented itself as the new village local and is handily only a five-minute walk from Mulberry Cottage, where Den and Mark live. “Mark goes up to the Lime Tree once a month on a Friday with his mates and we go for celebration meals because the food is absolutely amazing,” says Den.

The couple, who have put Mulberry Cottage on the market with Dacre, Son & Hartley’s Knaresborough office for £400,000 as they prepare to move a couple of villages away, are hoping the next owners will appreciate their local pub as much as they do.

"Villages that lose their pubs are killed and I’ve seen it in other places,” says Den. “It’s more than just a pub, it brings people into the locality.”

Research from Zoopla, published in December, showed that the local pub influenced a quarter of homeowners’ decision to buy.

Twenty four per cent of UK homeowners factored in their house’s local pub when deciding where to buy their home. A further 42 per cent of all homebuyers said that the quality of a local pub was an important element in the homebuying decision, with this figure rising to 48 per cent among men.

Dan Copley, consumer expert at Zoopla, said that “the research shows what a surprisingly strong role the local pub plays in the home-buying process – whether that’s to get a feel for the local community, discuss if you want to put an offer in, or even as a decisive factor in going ahead with a purchase”.

Nick Alcock, branch manager in the Knaresborough office of Dacre, Son & Hartley, says: “There are fewer villages with a decent pub now so it’s always a good sign for home buyers and it’s across the board in terms of ages. People see the pub as a central hub of a village and it’s where people can meet. The more rural you are the more important it becomes.”

Tim Waring, prime residential agent at GSC Grays, agrees: “In an ideal world most people want to be in a village that has got some life to it and one that has some facilities.”

GSC Grays has a number of properties near popular village pubs for sale including The Lodge in Kirkby Overblow, near Harrogate, for £1.695m, which is near the popular Shoulder of Mutton.

Meanwhile, The Alice Hawthorne pub in Nun Monkton, near York, was once a struggling village pub but is now thriving with rave reviews after it was bought and refurbished by the owners of the village's 'big house' back in 2013. “Money was poured into it and now Nun Monkton is a village that has very much come back on people’s radars,” says Tim.

It’s difficult to say whether a village pub adds value to a house but a study from Northumbria University, published in 2020, found “a strong positive relationship between an increase in the number of pubs and an increase in house prices”.

The effect was particularly strong in rural areas, the study showed.

“Does a good pub add value to a particular house? It’s very hard to judge,” says Tim. “What it does do is it adds to the saleability and when you add in other local facilities as well, it makes it a more desirable place to live.”

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In Leyburn, Chris Mainprize, whose five bedroom house in I’Anson Close recently went on the market for £430,000 with GSC Grays, says the number of pubs in the area, which include the Sandpiper Inn, is a strong draw for visitors and locals alike.

"They’ve all existed since I moved here in 2011”, he says, “so they must have a certain amount of clientele and they get very busy when there are events on in the town.”

A good selection of alcoholic drinks was the most popular aspect of a local pub, according to Zoopla’s survey, with 62 per cent saying this was important to them.

Tim, who lives in Slingsby, near Castle Howard, which has a popular pub, believes the key to longevity is atmosphere. "Providing a pub is reasonably popular to create an atmosphere where people want to go back, then you’re on to a winner,” he says.

"If you don’t use it you lose it, as the old saying goes. We’d always encourage people to support their local pub because if a village loses its pub and doesn’t have other amenities, house hunters will go to another village that does have those facilities.”