The pub’s the hub (From The Northern Echo)

The heart of Hudswell is beating again after the community pub was brought back to life.

HUDSWELL’S the village with the community pub. As seen on regional TV, but a switched-on initiative eagerly monitored throughout the land, it was re-opened last month by William Hague.

What the telly didn’t say but the pub newsletter does was that the first pint he pulled was Old Legover, from the Daleside Brewery near Harrogate.

The Foreign Secretary is 49, not always – it may be recalled – a real ale man. People mature: don’t be vague, cask for Hague.

The village is a couple of miles west of Richmond, in North Yorkshire, on the southern bank of the Swale and with wonderful vistas across the river.

It’s a generally quiet, largely stonebuilt place adjoining Ministry of Defence land. Even on a summer Saturday evening, you can still hear the military banging away.

There are homes like Bute House and Fair View, which may be understating things, a telephone kiosk with a notice that it doesn’t accept coins – it says nothing of notes – and, almost out of the village, the attractive, but understandably locked church of St Michael and All Angels.

A board in the porch records that in 1897 the church was granted £50 towards restoration by the Church and Building Foundation on condition that all seats should be free.

A notice, just about the only other information, lists the cleaning rota.

They’re all women. The men are too busy being bishops and things.

The pub closed two years ago. Dismayed at losing the perceived heart of the village, the Hudswell Community Pub Trust had sold £220,000 worth of shares to 170 people, minimum investment £500 and including the right honourable MP, to enable its refurbishment and joyous reopening.

via thenorthernecho.co.uk

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