The Horse and Jockey pub in Northwood, near Wem, had been closed for well over a year but the community have come together to take it on. Now it's back in business, and it was opened with North Shropshire MP Helen Morgan pulling the first pint.
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00:00 So if you straighten it up and push the glass up.
00:03 Like that?
00:06 Yeah, and then just lift it up.
00:08 There we go, right.
00:10 So with that, we declare the Horson Docky Community Pub open!
00:15 [Cheering]
00:25 So Mike and Saf, welcome to Northwood and the Horson Jacky.
00:30 It's lovely to be here, finally.
00:32 Finally, yeah, well you've had a bit of a journey, haven't you? Where you come from?
00:35 So I'm from Kent, so Safa, I'm from the Isle of Sheppey and Safa is from Gillingham.
00:40 Oh, well, yeah, yeah.
00:41 So, yeah, about four and a half hours away.
00:43 Yeah, so did family and friends think you were mad or did their Google Shops here and were like, "I'm jealous"?
00:48 Oh, yeah, yeah, I can't lie, same here.
00:52 Yeah, and it's been a good opening, isn't it? It's a few punters in already.
00:57 Let's hope they dig deep in their pockets.
00:59 Yes, of course, you know, I think everybody's worked so hard.
01:02 You know, the steering committee have worked hard.
01:05 All of the people around Northwood, the shareholders.
01:08 I think even the two of us, since we've been here, there's been a lot of interior work to do.
01:12 A lot of work around the bar and the outsides.
01:15 I think we're both, you know, I think I can speak for both of us, when we are just both so happy to just have the place finally open.
01:20 So what was it that appealed about moving to Shropshire and running a pub?
01:24 Did you know anything about Shropshire?
01:26 I knew about Shrewsbury, I knew about Wem and Ellesmere.
01:30 But it was just speaking to Lois and really falling in love with the idea of being part of a community pub.
01:36 Because you're not just walking into a pub and managing it.
01:39 This is a project. This is building something.
01:42 This is something that we can look back on in a few years and say, "Look what we did."
01:46 Well we wish you all the success in doing that. All the best guys.
01:50 So Louise, you were part of the steering committee playing a role in getting this pub back up and running.
01:56 That's right.
01:57 How many people were involved in that?
01:59 There were nine of us on the steering committee in total, but plenty more volunteers.
02:03 Everybody in the village really played their part in different times of the year to pull this thing together.
02:08 And this pub here has been closed for over a year, is that right?
02:11 That's right, yeah. It closed its doors at the end of September last year.
02:14 It's been about 14 months or so to get it to this point where we're opening tonight.
02:18 And did you ever think that day would come?
02:21 In truth, there were many, many times over the year when I thought that we were as far away from opening it as we ever were at the start.
02:28 And then usually some good news came through and it would give us a little bit of a steer to carry on to the next step.
02:35 Yeah. And what does it mean for the village then?
02:38 I did hear Lois saying five years ago when she moved here, part of the reason she moved here was because it's got a pub.
02:43 Yeah, absolutely. And it's one of the key reasons why we moved here as well.
02:47 And we really enjoyed coming to the pub. It was one of the ways that we were able to meet so many different members of the community so easily.
02:54 And I think just the fact that so many people are here tonight shows you that they really value the pub as being at the heart of the village.
03:01 It's the hub of the community.
03:04 One of the things that we're looking forward to is to make the pub expand its offerings over the next two to five years.
03:11 We're looking at the prospect of putting in a community shop. We're looking at putting in electric car charging.
03:17 We want to be able to offer a sort of a Wi-Fi hub for people who might want to work in a pub, you know, with coffee and cake for part of their working day.
03:26 And any other suggestions, because it is now a community pub, so suggestions from the local people will be taken into consideration, voted upon, and put into place if it's what the public want.
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