Cheers all round as community pub

By Margery Hookings newsdesk@westdorsetmag.co.uk

Broadwindsor’s community pub The White Lion celebrated its first birthday with a special get together for villagers.

The Palmers pub, which had been closed since the summer of 2021, reopened last year to a long queue of customers. The opening followed a massively successful fundraising campaign and a major interior refurbishment carried out by vocal volunteers.

“It’s certainly been an eventful 12 months,” said Rick Dyke, chairman of Broadwindsor Community Pub Ltd.

The pub has chalked up a number of successes in its first year – winning West Dorset CAMRA Pub of the Year, Palmers’ Master Cellarman award and retaining its five-star food hygiene rating.

Mr Dyke said: “Our first manager Kate Staff and her entire family put an enormous effort into getting the pub open and trading during 2022.

“It is well documented how the hospitality trade was affected by covid, how many people left the profession and the consequent difficulty there was in recruiting experienced staff. “We therefore have admiration for the task that Kate and her family took on and for keeping the pub open during difficult trading conditions. Ultimately though, Kate and her daughters decided it was time to move on and we wish them well in their new ventures.”

The pub is now run by managers Kerry and Clive Dammert, who took up the reins just in time for Easter. The couple are experienced in the pub and hotel trade and were looking for their own place to run.

Mr Dyke said: “We’ve had very positive reports of a warm welcome, great interaction and exceptionally good food. “We’re delighted that Kerry and Clive have joined us, and we’re excited about the next stage of the White Lion’s progress into a pub that is widely renowned for the quality of its food.”

In between managers, volunteers manned the pumps to keep the pub not only open but serving food. Volunteers still run the pub on Tuesday nights when a chip van makes its weekly visit to Broadwindsor and a folk music session is held once a month.

£2m boost for digital Dorset

More than £2million will be put into improving Dorset’s digital infrastructure.

West Dorset MP Chris Loder has hailed the launch of the new Rural Prosperity Fund as a ‘topup’ to the existing UK Shared Prosperity Fund which was launched last year.

The fund will be giving £2,066,000 to Dorset to improve its “digital infrastructure and productivity, job creation and the resilience of communities in Dorset”.