Wednesday 17 June 2009

Jolly Angler to close...

It was a shock to find out last night that my local pub -- the Jolly Angler -- is closing -- now closed in fact!

The first I heard of this was yesterday afternoon when a friend told me that they would be closing at the end of the evening never to reopen and they were selling off the drinks cheap. I had a couple of meetings yesterday evening -- Green City Forum and a Green Party business meeting -- so I did not get down there till 10 30p.m. When I arrived there were still a good number of people there all pretty gutted that the pub was closing. Local pubs are part of the glue that holds communities together and so to lose one makes us all poorer. After a chat to the landlord I was a little more informed. Apparently the owning company -- Enterprise -- were selling the pub off to be converted to flats as has happened to a number of other pubs in the area -- Plasterers, Dove, Eastgate. John has already alerted the local and national papers, CAMRA and got a petition going. He is also asking people to lobby the Council as they will need to agree a change of use for the property if it is to be converted into flats. And so the campaign begins!

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