The team behind the award-winning Dove Street Inn in Ipswich are spreading their wings – to Stowmarket.

East Anglian Daily Times: Ady Smith at the Dove Street Inn.Ady Smith at the Dove Street Inn. (Image: Archant)

The Ipswich pub will not be changing its successful formula but instead they will also be developing the Gladstone Arms, at Combs Ford.

Under Ady Smith and Karen Beaumont, the Dove has been a success story both for Ipswich and beyond, a real ale community pub where the beer is the main attraction.

There are no football games on giant television schemes or loud piped music, just conversation, good company and good beer.

Now that winning formula, a friendly pub with food and drink, is being taken to the Gladstone Arms which is to be given the Dove treatment, ready for a re-launch in October as a sister pub to the Dove.

The landlord and landlady will be local couple Carl and Mareesa Pearson who have wide experience in pubs and the hospitality industry.

The Dove has won many awards over the years and was the Great British Pub Awards Cask Pub of the Year for 2013.

Ady Smith and Karen Beaumont first got together to run the Milestone/Mulberry Tree pub in Ipswich in 1998. He had run the Olive Leaf and she had run pubs in the South West and Wales previously.

They made the Mulberry Tree a real ale and music pub before moving to the Dove which has been developed and expanded over the years.

It has regular beer festivals, the most recent having ended on Sunday, with dozens of guest beers.

Ady Smith said: “The Gladstone Arms has great potential. It is a total freehouse and we will be brewing some beers from the Dove Street Brewery specifically for them.

“The potential is there to really offer the people of Stowmarket, Combs and the surrounding villages a wider choice of pubs, and food will be part of the offer.

“We have got plans to develop it as a business as we go foward. We want to be part of the local community.

“We will also be running our loyalty scheme, as we do at the Dove, and it will be available at both outlets.”

Ady is originally from Stowmarket and reckons he had one of his first pints, as a young apprentice at ICI, at the Gladstone. He first pulled a pint at the Kings Head, Bildeston at a beer festival.

“We see greater potential with this site than we had from our vision for the Dove Street Inn,” he said. “The pub is for everybody who behaves, and respects the premises and other customers and have respect for themselves.

“Dogs are welcome, with well behaved owners on leads. Behave yourselves and you will always been welcome.”

Both Carl and Mareesa had worked at the Dove, he said, and had wide experience in the industry, including running the bars at Ipswich Town FC.

“They will have the support from the team here at the Dove,” he said.

There was a lot of work being done to get the Gladstone ready for opening, Carl added. “It is starting to look better now,” he said.

Mareesa is also a local, having grown up in Great Finborough.

“We also lived in Stowmarket and have only been in Ipswich a couple of years,” she said. “We are really really excited. It is the first time we have been landlord and landlady.”