The Baum

Simon Crompton started working at the Baum in 1993, was managing it two years later, and bought it with his wife Heidi in 2005 — the proper apprenticeship-to-ownership arc, completed on Toad Lane of all streets, where the Rochdale Pioneers opened the co-operative movement's founding shop in 1844; the pub sits partly within the Pioneers' building. CAMRA named it National Pub of the Year for 2012, the biggest prize in the trade's gift, and the bar still works through seven real ales daily. The branch surveyors were in as recently as January 2026 and found everything where it should be, which for a free house of this calibre is the expected result.