1 week Ago By [email protected] (Maxine Denton)
Residents in a small Cornish village have joined forces in a bid to save their local pub. The Stag Hunt Inn at Ponsanooth has been up for sale for a year and locals are trying to save it from closure. In December 2024, the pub’s current owners, Wayne and Michelle Randle, announced it would close for a week after New Year's Eve.
However, the day before it was due to reopen on January 7, the couple shared a short post on announcing it would remain closed until further notice. They later explained that they had made the decision to close the Stag Hunt Inn as not enough people were going in and they couldn’t afford to “keep the pub alive” without customers. Now, the pub is on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays but residents are hoping to secure its future by turning it into a community pub.
Mark and Katherine Berriman teamed up with their friends Sam and Joanne Fitch with the intention of buying The Stag Hunt Inn and turning it into a venue that is about more than simply food and drink. “It started over a pint really,” Mark told CornwallLive. “We started this journey back in February when the pub had been on the market for a good year or so and had [gone down in price], so we talked about taking it on.
“We have nothing to gain financially from this, we live outside the village of Ponsanooth but we love the village and there’s a lot in the village that we like to go and do but there isn’t anywhere we can go to have a meal or a drink with our kids. “So, [we’re doing this] to have a meeting place for the family really and meet our friends who live in the village. We can also expand that with a community pub because they don’t just do food and drink, they offer all sorts like warm spaces, youth clubs, knit and natter groups, and stop social isolation.
” Collectively, they set up Ponsanooth Community Benefit Society, along with other residents in the village, and are now trying to raise the £490,000 needed to buy and renovate the Stag Hunt Inn - the only pub in Ponsanooth. Mark said they had hoped to apply for the Government’s Community Ownership Fund, which would have allowed the community to have had a match-funded grant to finance the purchase of the pub. However, the scheme closed in December 2024 and the community group is now hoping to buy it with the introduction of a share offer which will be released in May.
Once the pub has been purchased, Mark said it will then be managed by a professional and the community group will work behind the scenes to pass on feedback about how they would like it to operate. “Hopefully, we would get some volunteers to start with to get the pub going but after that, there’s no reason why positions can’t be paid and training offers and young apprenticeships,” Mark said. “We would stay behind the scenes and become the voice of the community to pass things on to the managers and get things in place.
“If we were to get a tenant in, it would be completely up to them and yes, we would get rent each week or each month but the voice of the community would be lost. The whole point is to have the building pay for itself and be able to run its own maintenance but also raise money to be able to have different projects in the community funded by the pub.” Mark said the Stag Hunt Inn will need to be refurbished but in terms of what the plans are for its future, it will be up to the community group to decide.
The group have arranged drop-in information sessions for the public at the Ponsanooth hall on Saturday, April 12 from 11am to 1pm and Wednesday, April 16 from 6pm to 8pm. They are also arranging a “Pub in the Park” fundraising event on May 25 on Ponsanooth playing field. “As for what we want the pub to look like, that’s very much in the wider group’s hands,” Mark said.
Once we have a share offer, we then have members and they can vote on what we do with the pub. “There’s a lot of work that needs doing in the pub. It needs painting and renovation and the potential is there but it all costs money and I suppose that’s the problem with one person owning it, they have to fund everything themselves.
“Having a community pub, we have had people who have offered their services to us, like people who can paint or they can pull a pint or they can cook and people have offered their skills later down the line and that’s what it’s all about. “It’s about coming together to help run the place and it shares the cost and the burden. People are more likely to go to a pub that they have investment in, whether that be in money or in time.
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