The Old Horn Inn, Spennithorne: How a community rescued Yorkshire Dales village pub

Their wake-up call over losing their only pub in the village came in mid-2022.

“The couple who’d owned the pub freehold just put a note on the door saying We’re Closed,” says Alan Cape, who has lived in the village for the past 20 years.

“And they never reopened. The next thing we saw was a planning application to turn it into a couple of houses. There were lots of objections raised immediately to Richmondshire District Council and a dozen of us held an informal meeting

to chat about what we could do about it. That’s when we formed The Old Horn Community Group.

Alan says that if the community hadn’t acted quickly that the planners may have passed the planning application and the pub, which is over 200 years old, would have been gone.

“Our first concern was to find out beyond doubt that our community felt there was a need for the pub, that there was the will for it to not just carry on as it had for centuries, but for it to come into the 2020s, to be relevant to our community today.

“The group devised a questionnaire and we hand delivered it to all homes in Spennithorne and the neighbouring village of Harmby, less than a mile away, and it was quite obvious that people wanted the pub, so we then set about putting a prospectus together to raise the money that would be required.

“We reckoned it would cost £360,000 to buy and do up the pub as it needed a lot of doing up and we were helped by an organisation called The Plunkett Foundation which has supported over 600 rural community businesses and has helped save many village pubs in North Yorkshire including The Green Dragon in Exelby, George & Dragon in Hudswell, The Countryman’s Inn in Hunton as well as now our pub .

“We were made aware that the government had a scheme called The Community Ownership Fund and that if you put a decent application forward you could get matched funding for what you raised yourself, which would mean raising £180,000 ourselves and hoping that our application was successful.

Time was clearly of the essence and a prospectus was launched at a very well-attended meeting in the village hall that announced a closing date by which the £180,000 was to be raised was January 2023.

Alan says the target was reached by the end of January with over 170 investors but that the village was then on tenterhooks until receiving a positive reply to their application, but that still wouldn’t mean they had achieved their goal. There would be the purchase of the pub to complete.

“When we received the good news in March 2023 we were able to move ahead and offer to buy the pub. Our offer was accepted and in June 2023 we received the keys and The Old Horn Inn was under the ownership of Old Horn Community Pub Society.

“We started by gutting it completely. Our diary page on our website shows many from the community taking part in stripping it out. It was a real community effort.

Alan pays tribute to a number of local craftsmen who took part in the total renovation and renewal of the pub.

“So many gave so much, but we are also incredibly grateful to the fantastic work of a number of local craftsmen who gave their time either at reduced rates or for nothing. Matthew Brook is a local builder who was responsible for most of the renovation work, along with local electrician Peter Mundell and local plumber Lee Davison.

“We had a beautiful fireplace built completely free of charge by Bruce Tunstall and our new bar was built by local craftsman Terry Harrington who signs his work with a ram’s head carved. And another special mention must go to local man Wayne Farrow who runs a skip hire business. I lost count of the number of skips he gave us.

Alan believes the community involvement that has come about through getting The Old Horn Inn back has shown the spirit that there still is for a village pub in Spennithorne, that has a lovely cricket ground and is situated in a beautiful part of the world, but ultimately will stand or fall on its community participation.

“A lot of people said when the pub closed it took the heart out of the village, now it’s back. It reopened to the public on May 21 this year and we held our official reopening on September 12 with sisters Marguerite and Norma who grew up in the pub when their parents were landlord and landlady decades ago, Norma still lives next door.

“Social inclusion is also a concern and with our local population profile being a little at the older end it is really important to have somewhere to go that is easy to get to. The nearest other pubs are a mile and a half away. There’s no bus service.

“We also managed to get another £50,000 from the National Lottery through their Community Fund which has meant we will be extending the kitchen and created a disabled toilet facility.

“We are so pleased to have attracted a really great couple to run the pub, Mirela and Kornel, who come from Hungary. Kornel is an excellent chef and as well as all other typical pub meals he makes a great Hungarian Goulash. We also have two letting bedrooms.

“The Old Horn Inn is back, but it doesn’t stop there, now everyone needs to keep supporting it.