Watch: Inside the award-winning pub at the heart of a Staffordshire village
It's become a community hub, a supportive centre of a village and a pub which has achieved high standards and been acknowledged as one of the best.
The Star in Penkridge sits in the centre of the village on the old Market Place, adorned with red brick and a tiled roof, and is a venue which has been a leading pub as part of the Marston's brand, having been voted Marston's pub of the year in 2023 and has been shortlisted in the Great British Pub Awards 2024 in the Pub of the Year (Sponsored by Marstons) category.
It has been part of the village since the 1820s when it opened under the stewardship of William Southern as an inn, then became a beerhouse in 1883 and had closed in 1908 and taken on a new life as a Co-op store and a private residence before being restored and converted back into a pub in 1981.
The success of the pub has been the product of hard work by the staff, with landlady Alison Heath having led the way since taking over in 2017.
Ms Heath said she had always been in the trade through her grandparents and parents and, after leaving the RAF in 2005, she starting running hotels and pubs and said that there had been a lot to do when she took over the Star in 2017.
She said: "When we came in, it had the feeling of a working men's club, with no gin list and wine on tap, not out of the bottle.
"There were a number of easy changes to be made, starting with adding a card machine, because you wouldn't be able to run a pub without one of those nowadays and then started making it more friendly for women, as it had been very male-heavy.
"We then started putting on entertainment and doing a Sunday session, which was with musicians, not people with backing tracks, so people have to be able to play guitar or ukuleles or drums or anything like that, and that's really developed over the last few years."
The Star is a one room pub with several distinct areas, as well as log burning fires, and has a patio and seating area outside, as well as a teepee with extra seating and space for an outside pizza oven.
Ms Heath said the pub had become very community focussed, both as a place for events and meetings, but also as a place which sponsored and helped local sports teams and clubs.
She said: "It's a strange pub because people come in and can't believe how busy it can be on a Monday evening and that used to be because we had darts and dominoes teams before Covid, and while they've gone, we've now got five-a-side football teams.
"We also get Penkridge cricket club in here a lot and we do sponsor their first team, as well as the netball team and under nines football club, so we do invest in the village because they invested in us."
As a Small Independent Brewing Association within Marston's, the pub is able to stock Marston's brands such as Wainwrights and Banks's Mild and also has the ability to stock its range from breweries as far as 30 miles away.
Over the years, the drink selection at the pub has changed, with beers like Red Stripe, Beavertown Neck Oil and Asahi on tap and a range of ales always on handpulls and changing regularly, plus a large gin selection and a large range of bottles of wine, with the average cost of a pint being between £3.80 and £5.75.
The pub also produces its own cobs, coming in ham and in cheese and onion, as well as scotch eggs, which are made on site and also sold to local butchers and bakeries, in excess of 1,000 scotch eggs made each week.
It's been a long road to get the pub where it is, but Ms Heath said the pub was part of her life and would probably be her last pub.
She said: "The Star feels like family to me and I wouldn't want to be without it and couldn't see myself being in another pub because this will be my end pub.
"I've have about six or seven pubs now and I don't know any pub like the Star as there are so many pubs that are quiet during the start of the week, but we've thriving and I can't imagine being anywhere else."