Raising a glass to new era at local pub

The seven have pooled their savings to buy the pub, which began as a small farmhouse 400 years ago, degenerated into a drinking house of ill repute during the late 19th century, and matured into a grade-two-listed hotel and restaurant.

The seven are former landlady and landlord Christine Cullen and Jim Murrell of Rosedale; portrait artist Dianne Smith and husband Peter, a former racing car driver and rhubarb grower of nearby Thorgill; Kevin Laing, a transport manager for Schneider GB, and his wife Julie, a doctor's receptionist of Bilton-in-Ainsty, near York; and Dannyelle Goodwin, a New Zealander and information technology contractor for a London firm of solicitors.

They purchased The White Horse for 450,000 after it was liquidated five months ago. The price was cheap – the previous owners had bought it unseen at an auction for 1.2m in 2004 – and, to everybody's surprise, the freehold was up for sale, not the lease.

Christine, a publican's daughter who has been working in the pub trade for 32 years, said: "In recent times, it has been owned by hands-off, impersonal, soulless companies. We were fed up with it being closed and we've always thought it had potential."

The old farm buildings are no more, but the stunning view remains just as it was described in 1947 in sale papers by the auctioneers Jackson, Stops and Staff. "The White Horse Farm Hotel is positioned on the corner of Gill Lane and Daleside Road overlooking the village with a magnificent vista of the east side of the dale."

The pub is a convenient ale stop on the steep road to the 336 metre-high Chimney Bank Top. No wonder the seven partners decided they wanted to save it from closure. They now have a hard job on their hands after eight years of poor maintenance and neglect.

The pot-hole-ridden car park alone will cost at least 4,000 to gravel, and the previous owners took away all the beds.

But with their combined talents they are determined to drag the "seriously under-traded" White Horse into the 21st century while, at the same, time preserving its history, finding guests for its 11 en-suite bedrooms, and keeping it as a proper pub as well as a traditional English restaurant serving local game and fish. The "adzed" bar top, for example, is being renovated to restore the honeycomb effect of the dressed timber. And the walls of one room have been donated to the Rosedale History Society, who, with the help of the Beck Isle Museum, the Ryedale Folk Museum, and a small grant, hope to transform the space into a pictorial village story, beginning with the 12th century Cistercian priory.

The White Horse, formerly known as Lane Head, was run by farmer and innkeeper John Garbutt, according to an 1871 census.

It has been variously used for the Rosedale Shepherds' Retreat Club's annual dinner, parish council meetings, inquests on mining accidents, and harvest auctions.

It was also a refreshment stop for the hundreds of spectators who lined the road to watch the pre-First World War motor races to the top of Chimney Bank.

Going even further back, drinkers have been supping ale here since 1703. But little is known about its history until the Rosedale iron ore mining boom of the 1860s.

Then The White Horse wore a saddle of ironstone dust as tired miners wet their parched throats at the bar and staggered back to the old barracks for a few hours sleep before the next shift.

Some didn't manage the 15-minute walk to the barracks and ended up in the pub's hay loft. Poor, inebriated John Whitwood was one. He was found dead at the bottom of the loft ladder with a fractured skull in 1905.

Christine Cullen and Jim Murrell have discovered a bit more of the pub's history for themselves. Each time they closed a loft hatch cover in a bathroom it slid open again. Intrigued, Jim climbed up and discovered a tiny attic decorated with flowery wallpaper. A guest swears she felt a small child climb into bed with her when she was staying at the pub. It's enough to make the ghostly miners quake in their boots.

Christine and Dianne Smith are convinced the pub is haunted. But Peter Smith laughs off the loft manhole cover sliding open for no apparent reason.

Ghosts aside, there's that Australian song made famous by the late Slim Dusty – "there's nothin' so lonesome, so morbid, or drear, as to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer".

Rosedalians have been gasping for variety these last three years – the village's historic Milburn Arms Hotel closed two years ago and The Blacksmiths Arms at nearby Hartoft was shut for over two years, although that has just reopened.

Tonight, The White Horse opens its doors as a free house after two closures in two years, with beer from Heineken UK and Theakston's, plus guest ales soon. Rosedale, Slim Dusty, and the Victorian miners will drink to that.