Air Balloon (pub)

The pub is situated next to a roundabout junction with the A417, a major road between Swindon and Gloucester via Cirencester.[1] The A436 meets the A417 at this point; the two roads together form a de facto bypass of Cheltenham between Oxford and Gloucester.[2]

View of the pub from the A417

The pub opened in 1784 and is probably named after one of the first British balloon flights: the launching of a small hydrogen balloon by Edward Jenner on 2 September 1784, which flew from Berkeley Castle to Kingscote and then on to a field near Birdlip,[3][4] the year after the pioneering flights of the Montgolfier brothers' hot air balloon and Jacques Charles's hydrogen balloon in Paris.[1] It was known as the Balloon by 1796 and renamed the Air Balloon in 1802.[5] By 1856, the landlord was brewing beer on-site.[1] The premises were part of the Cowley Manor Estate until some time early in the twentieth century. The pub was bought by Greene King in 2004.[6]

The pub has been under threat of demolition as it sits alongside a short section of single-carriageway road which is otherwise a high-quality route between the M4 and M5 motorways.[7][8] The junction is a notorious accident blackspot; from 1999 to 2014 there were an estimated 340 casualties.[9]

In March 2019, Highways England proposed improvements that would include demolition of the pub.[10][11] Highways England has ruled out a junction at the Air Balloon as the local geography and steep hills nearby would make it impossible to build a high-quality road meeting modern safety standards.[12] The road could not be routed anywhere else as it would cut through Barrow Wake, which is a Site of Special Scientific Interest.[13] Highways England stated that it would talk to landowners and assess the social impact of the pub's demolition in a further design stage.[14]

Citations

Sources

Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Air Balloon, Birdlip.

• Official website
• A417 Missing Link – includes future of the junction