IN recent years many rural pubs have closed. Remember these? The Peaceful Home and Running Horse in Alresford; the Plough, Bishop’s Sutton; the Black Horse, Colden Common; Captain Barnard, Compton; the Rack and Manger, Crawley; the Andover Arms, King’s Somborne; Lunways Inn, Micheldever; the Shearer’s Arms, Owslebury; the Newport Inn, Braishfield; Saddlers, Sutton Scotney; the Dolphin, Twyford, the Red Lion at West Meon. The list goes on; the Fox and Hounds at Crawley. Er, except the Fox and Hounds is poised to reopen after an 18-month closure.
As we report on page five, Lenny Carr-Roberts, the man who saved the Bugle in Twyford, has bought the Fox and Hounds, memorably described in a CAMRA guide as “evocative of the sets of country inns in 1950s British films.”
What his purchase shows is that there is life yet in the village pub and that it will be a boost to life in Crawley for everyone, except curmudgeons.
Mr Carr-Roberts’s success in Twyford shows local people will support pubs if they offer the consumer what they want.
Meanwhile, we pay tribute to the outgoing mayor Jane Rutter who has done a superb job representing the city council, attending some 550 engagements.
With good humour and charm, she has been prepared to try virtually anything and is almost certainly the first mayor in Winchester to wing walk and abseil.
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