The Golden Fleece on Mansfield Road has a long and varied history as a Nottingham pub. It was first built around 1845 and was one of many Shipstone’s pubs in the City Centre. Over the next 170+ years it changed hands many times, but always remained a regularly visited venue for people doing the Mansfield Road run. One of its most impressive historical features is located in the raised seated area at the back of the pub, where a sealed glass floor panel covers what would have been the old barrel drop, allowing a view of the very deep cellar below the pub.
The latest transformation of the pub is best explained by the current Manager, Marc Paling, who provided the following detailed update.
“The whole story of the Golden Fleeces current unique selling point, as a completely vegan pub started from a little café up the road called Prickly Pear. The café had been running for 3 years when the former landlord of the Fleece Ben, who currently runs the Angel Microbrewery, asked if we wanted to rent the kitchen in the pub, as a second business venture. The Fleece had already begun its journey making its entire bar vegan, so it seemed to be the perfect partnership to make it Nottingham’s fully Vegan pub.
Prickly Pears vision of bridging the gap of healthy plant-based food and the boom in vegan junk food would seem to be easily transferable to the Fleece and after a few months we decided to move our entire operations into the pub & close the café.
We then took over the lease completely in February 2023 so we could develop the Golden Fleece as a totally plant-based pub. The vegans that come in specifically to visit the pub, on their first arrival are often dumbstruck that they are in a completely safe environment, where anything from a gin to a kebab doesn’t have to be questioned, also able to choose from an entire menu of food, opposed to the usual 3 items you would get in a regular pub. We also know we have a lot of customers that have come in for a pint, and they may not know that the hazy pint of ale they receive is unfined, or that the garlic & thyme fries they ordered have no animal products in them. However, the most important thing is they enjoy both, they like the atmosphere and friendly staff and they soon become regulars. One of our nonvegan customers said “the special thing about Golden Fleece is that it’s adapted it’s fun vegan junk food vibe from Prickly Pear into a colourful alternative to traditional pub food, with things like To Fish & Chips & Jackfruit curry becoming staples of the menu’.
Of course, having an entirely plant based pub has advantages to other factions of society. Often a lot of allergens are involved in regular everyday cooking, such as dairy, crustaceans, fish, molluscs & eggs – so that’s a quarter of the main food allergens taken out of the equation already. We put a lot of effort in offering most of our menu gluten free, using separate fryers and gluten alternative to our bread and beer batter at all times – you can also be sure to find a Gluten Free ale which is sold under our ‘Mad Sheep’ brand, but brewed by Hollowstone. We offer 2 rotating cask ales and 1 traditional cider and a range of 8 craft ales, all selected as vegan friendly. We also like to pair our food to beer with daily offers on food, for example ToFish’ Friday you would get our legendary ToFish & chips with a pint of beer, Real ale included of course! For £10. We have regular offers on our beers, with a Happy Hour from 5pm to 7pm every day, all day on Wednesday and from 4pm until close on Sunday, with 20% off cask & draught. We’re also keen to attract CAMRA members and offer a 20p per pint, 10p half, off the cask ales.
All in all, Prickly Pear and then Golden Fleece have managed to keep a foot in the door through a very unstable period of time and after the vegan boom ended, we’ve managed to adapt and be one of the last vegan businesses still left in Nottingham – growing from a café to taking over the lease of a pub”. On my visit to the pub, this example of a pump clip from Goff’s brewery, clearly displaying a vegan friendly “V” symbol, demonstrates the more focused effort that some breweries are considering. However, it was also interesting to hear from one of the staff of a recent case where a beer had been supplied as an apparently “vegan-friendly” product, but a well-informed customer soon highlighted that it was not, so the beer was taken off immediately.
We know from visitors at last year’s Robin Hood Beer & Cider Festival, that the inclusion of clear information on vegan or unfined beers within the festival programme was a definite benefit, along with the other mandatory guidelines for allergens, e.g. gluten free. This is definitely an area that Nottingham CAMRA will continue to focus on, to help breweries and pubs support customers in making an informed choice. We will be developing a dedicated section of this website to help local breweries promote their core ranges that cater for this target audience and would welcome any feedback from members on this, please e-mail: membership@nottinghamcamra.org.
For more general details on the pub, please click on the WhatPub link, below:
