The Future of the Royal Oak Pub ?

Perhaps now is the time to consider what might happen to the Royal Oak Pub if the business gets into difficulties.

The Royal Oak Pub has not enjoyed particularly good business for over five years, in fact.  The landlady has constantly to come up with ways to encourage villagers to use the pub.  If her business fails then the owners of the Pub will have a choice between two options.  One is to find another tenant landlord.  The other is to close and de-license the Pub and sell the entire plot to a property developer.  The owners in fact have a current track record of selling hundreds of pubs across the country in recent months and the spectre of the loss of our pub in the village might not be far away.

Property development could mean the following; (i) conversion of the Pub into a private dwelling house after 400 years, (ii) the building of new houses along the High Street thus removing the car park and (iii) the building of more new houses in the garden area.  Think about this – villagers doing their shopping and mothers delivering their children to the school have used that car park, which is an undoubted asset in the village centre – village groups have used the garden area for fundraising activities, it being another asset offering a pleasant open space.  But both could be lost.  There are some other services that the Pub offers to the village, eg. a function room for weddings, bands etc. and a pensioner's lunch each week and all these would be lost.

This is where the slogan “use it or loose it” applies.  In the 1800 population of the parish there are some 1000 adults within walking distance of the Pub.  Even if a small portion of that number came along for a drink and maybe a snack, each week, then the business would survive.  You don’t have to be drinker to enjoy the Pub and meet your friends there – talk to the landlady (when she is back from holiday!) about your preferences regarding food and types of music – remember, be patient; a pub always turns into what locals prefer.

Do the ‘locals’ prefer a private house?

There's a horrible irony here - we have a group in the village working hard and hoping to resurrect for our community a failed building yet there's already a much more significant community building, ie. the Pub, that we may loose because we are taking it for granted.

All this is just a personal assessment of a situation as they find it - not being heavy users of the Pub themselves.
Maureen King & Tony Marsh - first posted June 24th 2009, amended June 30th 2009.