http://www.cotswoldjournal.co.uk/news/local/4514103.North_Cotswold_pub_changes_hands_again/

North Cotswold pub changes hands again

A NORTH Cotswold pub has been sold months after being damaged by a car crashing into it.

The Urban and County Leisure company has bought Moreton’s Pub and Restaurant at Salford Hill, on the A44 road between Moreton and Chipping Norton, from the Ora Ventures firm.

Urban and County Leisure, which owns three other pubs elsewhere in Britain, will rename Moreton’s as The Greedy Goose and subject it to a refurbishment.

The Grade II listed building, believed to be about 600 years old, was called the Cross Hands Inn until Ora Ventures renamed the pub when buying it about a year before the crash.

Moreton’s staff claimed the crash, on December 13, 2008, seemed to stir up ghosts at the building because there was subsequently an increase in reports of spectral activity there.

A spectre of a woman, floating orbs, electrical appliances being activated when nobody was near them and sudden, inexplicable temperature changes were among strange happenings reported.

Moreton’s management called in the Ghostfinder Paranormal Society, one of Britain’s leading ghost hunting organisations, to investigate.

A 13-strong team, from the society, spent a night in the building conducting a paranormal investigation.

Jason Ross, Urban and County Leisure’s finance director, said the purchase and refurbishment would cost more than £1 million.

He said: “The reason why we took on another inn is we’d looked at the demographic of the area, looked at the chimneys around the property and basically decided that area is ready for a good, simple food offer.

“It’s a property that came onto our table and fitted all the criteria.”