Plenty more room at the inn?
Apr 06, 2022
5 minutes
Illustrations by Sholto Walker
‘When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England’ Hilaire Belloc
A VILLAGE is a sad place without a pub. In the country, the golden glow from a saloon bar window is often the single point of light on a dark evening, a promise of warmth and human connection. The Cotswold village of Stonesfield near Woodstock, Oxfordshire, lost its last remaining pub when The White Horse closed in March 2020. The owner had already converted the lovely old skittle alley into a house and then sold the pub itself to a property developer. It has now been boarded up for two years.
Often, the market value of a pub is much less than the building’s potential as residential housing and, since the surge in demand for
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