CAMRA now has an annual award to recognise the efforts of local communities – not necessarily including local CAMRA branches – to save their local pub. The winners for 2019 are the Friends of Ye Olde Cross in Old Ryton Village, Tyne & Wear (although I understand that locals still prefer County Durham) NE40 3QP. The pub was closed by Enterprise Inns (as was) in 2018 and in what seems to have been a copybook exercise, the Friends registered it as an Asset of Community Value and set up a Community Benefit Society, raising £150,000 through a share offer to over 300 people to purchase the pub, all within 18 months. The pub, an Edwardian half-timbered building, stands on the village green, the site of the cross from which it takes its name. The Friends have appointed tenants to run the pub and it is now very much the centre of community events and activities. A spokesman for the Friends, Colin Cheesman, told the Morning Advertiser, “We are honoured and proud to be chosen for this prestigious award. It is testimony to the commitment and effort of the community who all pulled together to raise funds to buy the pub. The renovation continues – as does the successful day-to-day running of the pub – by our appointed tenants, who have really embraced the concept of developing a successful community pub.”
The runner-up is the Three Tuns Action Group from Guilden Morden on the Cambridgeshire/Hertfordshire border. Greene King closed this 17th century Grade II-listed village local in 2014 and sold it to developers. With help from the Plunkett Foundation, local residents were able to raise the funds to buy the pub. Volunteers then had to put in a great deal of work to refurbish not just the pub itself but also the publican’s flat and the half-acre garden before they could appoint tenants. The Action Group transformed into the Guilden Morden Community Pub Limited and chairman John Harrison told the Morning Advertiser, “Thank you to CAMRA for recognising our fight to save the Three Tuns. We are very proud to receive this award. It took a determined campaign committee, the dedication of many volunteers and the financial support of over 270 shareholders to achieve this. To see the pub thriving and busy, and being used by all the community, is fantastic. Not only has this asset of community value been restored to the heart of the village of Guilden Morden for the first time in six years, but its future is now secure.” The WhatPub entry is here.
Tony Hedger