(PLUS PINTS AND PORK PIES)
THE VILLAGE SHOP SAVIOUR
Ruth Anderson
“I really did have no idea just how much people love pork pies until I started doing this!”
So says Ruth Anderson, resident of the remote Cumbrian village of Kirkoswald for the last 12 years and one of the leading voices behind the rescue of the village’s last surviving shop.
“So far we’ve sold 195 kilos of bananas, 360 pork pies and £1,400 worth of locally made sandwiches and cakes", says Ruth, calculating the booming sales that have made the cash register trill in the first six months the shop has been open.
Once home to seven shops in its Victorian heyday, when there was a regular market in the village, Kirkoswald’s very last store closed during the early stages of the pandemic when the owner died from the coronavirus.
“It was
