In response to Sam Wollaston's article on the closure of The Hare and Hounds in Bowland Bridge, Cumbria, campaigners fighting to save their local pubs express both concern and determination. Wollaston highlighted the numerous challenges forcing pubs out of business, but groups across the country are refusing to give up and many are succeeding.
Community Efforts to Save the Somerset Arms
Ian Williamson, chair of the Semington Community Benefit Society in Wiltshire, shares his group's efforts to buy the Somerset Arms, which closed three years ago, leaving the village without a pub. "We have tremendous support from the community," he says, drawing encouragement from the Hop Pole Inn in nearby Limpley Stoke, which stood empty for months but recently became Camra's pub of the year. "I have seen for myself what a huge impact it has had on the life of the village. The Somerset Arms will rise again."
Success Stories in North Yorkshire
Susan Gregory from Burton in Lonsdale, North Yorkshire, recounts how her village's last pub, the Punch Bowl, was sold to the community in 2025. A local workforce restored the building, reopening the business last December. "We now have a convivial social space, for which we are all grateful," she says. The community has also invested in a village shop (bought in 2005), refurbished the village hall, and installed broadband for the rural north.
Gregory criticizes private equity funds that "don't 'get' community, seeing only pound signs on a spreadsheet, not the people behind it."
Both correspondents emphasize that community assets are vital for local cohesiveness and hope that more pubs can be saved through collective action.
