The village that bought its own pub

Hesket Newmarket is a village in Cumbria, and in 2003 its pub, the Old Crown, went up for sale, with the likeliest ending being the one every village knows. Sold, converted, gone.

The villagers bought it instead. They registered a co-operative that March, completed the purchase in the August, and the Old Crown became England's first registered co-operatively owned pub. It is still open, and marked twenty years of it in 2023.

It has not stayed a one-off either. Hundreds of village shops and pubs across the UK are now owned by the people who use them, and the Plunkett Foundation, which supports them, puts their long-term survival rate at around nine in ten, against something closer to half for small businesses generally.

The explanation usually given for that is a practical one rather than a sentimental one. A community-owned shop is measured by whether it is still there next year rather than by what it earns, and it is run by people who would rather it was.

Most villages will never need to buy anything, and the instinct underneath it is an ordinary one. The businesses on your doorstep keep going because people use them, and people use them when they know they are there.