Historic Argyle Inn in NSW’s Southern Tablelands listed for sale with $5m guide
When Keith Kerridge bought the Argyle Inn about a decade ago, the historic Taralga pub was still serving drinks, but patrons needed to watch where they stepped.
“There were holes in the floor around the bar,” he says. “The whole place was in desperate need of an overhaul.”
Today, the Argyle Inn is a very different proposition, serving as the go-to pub for Taralga’s locals, a dining and accommodation destination for visitors from Sydney and Canberra, and a popular setting for weddings and celebrations.
Its journey from a rough-and-ready country watering hole to one of the Southern Tablelands’ best-known hospitality venues took two years. It began with Kerridge’s attachment to old buildings.
“It was really on the edge of pretty serious structural issues,” he explains. “That was the thing that motivated me. It was more just to restore the old building.”
Kerridge bought the property, joining forces with chef and provedore Hugh Wennerbom and his wife, architect Mary Ellen Hudson, who shared their connection to the district and their vision for the pub.
The floors were lifted and replaced, new plumbing and electrical systems were installed, and part of the roof was renewed; new bathrooms were installed throughout, and they built a commercial kitchen and added two large water tanks with a combined capacity of about 250,000 litres.
A diesel generator was also installed to start automatically if mains power fails.
“It was a major renovation,” Kerridge says. “What it means for the next owner is that there’s nothing left to do – they can come in and start operating straight away.”
The team was equally careful with the building’s character. The Argyle Inn was first built in the Victorian tradition and expanded in stages, from its original central section to the two-storey, winged building that stands on Orchard Street today.
Ornate ceilings were retained and a double fireplace, previously concealed in the former kitchen, was exposed. Victorian furniture and decorative pieces were sourced largely through Sydney auctions, balancing the building’s history with the needs of a contemporary venue.
Kerridge’s favourite part of the finished pub is the bar.
“I’ve been to a lot of bars around the world,” he says. “You don’t find a lot that are as good as that – it has a grandness about it.”
When the restored Argyle Inn reopened in 2017, it gave visitors a new reason to make the trip to Taralga, about 45 kilometres north of Goulburn and within weekend reach of Sydney and Canberra.
Wennerbom, whose kitchen experience included Sean’s in Bondi, built a food offering around produce from the surrounding district and the owners’ farms. In 2018, it earned a chef’s hat from The Good Food Guide Awards.
A prime turnkey investment
The inn located at 80 Orchard Street occupies a 3116-square-metre parcel with established gardens and about 757 square metres of floor space. It has eight guest rooms with en suites, self-contained manager’s accommodation above the bar, a commercial kitchen, substantial dining and function areas, and a large beer garden with productive vegetable beds.
The freehold and operating business are being offered together, giving a buyer both the underlying real estate and the opportunity to grow the venue’s trading performance.
It’s being advertised with a $5 million guide through an expressions-of-interest campaign closing at noon on September 30. David Medina and Mike Whelan of NSW Sotheby’s International Realty are handling the sale.
“It’s only been on the market for a week and the response has been really positive,” says Medina. “It’s wide ranging but a lot of enquiry has come from people that have known the pub and like the pub and understand it. They want to own something that doesn’t mean any money spent and has a tremendous amount of uplift.”
The infrastructure-heavy restoration is a major part of that proposition. A buyer is not being asked to rescue a fragile heritage building before working on the business; the expensive structural and services work has already been completed.
There is also an opportunity to enhance monthly income. The Argyle Inn has recently traded for only two days a week, despite its established reputation and position on the increasingly busy north-south route through Taralga towards Bathurst.
Medina says the business has been financially successful without requiring further capital from the owners since it reopened, despite the pandemic interruption.
“There’s definitely the potential for it to be open six days a week,” he says. “There’s so much more that could be done with the place.”
The sale is about stage of life, rather than a loss of faith in the venue. Kerridge is now 75 and wants to consolidate his interests and spend more time on other pursuits.
“It’s time for someone else to take over who has the energy to take it to the next level,” he says.
