People & Food Communities

Whilst visiting The Nutshell, smallest pub in the UK, iIn Bury St Edmunds Suffolk.  county town of my birth.

Huddled in the crowd is my sister &  brother in law, retired here from London 15 years ago, we are sitting in  half the pub with 70% of the night's crowd. Celebrating with the  rural looking chappies who are recent grant recipients  for a community pub.  They, plus other volunteers, saved their local pub, The White Horse in Thelnetham, near Diss,  ( wee hamlet of houses) in Suffolk.

After volunteers running the White Horse pub for almost 2 yrs, it can now be regenerated from a share of the UK  Government’s £25m  Community Ownership Fund. . The like for like grant of around $600, 000 is to help buy, renovate and restore so it can continue to serve as both a pub and community hub, supporting a wide range of local social activities and clubs. Amongst this crowd is the instigator, the core of the campaign to  “Save the pub” :   Ikigai Farm Ltd, with its Japanese inspired  philosophy around community leadership and not  Individual leaders, he developed  Ikegai Farms ltd.  Also you see the “farmer” as part of the centre of the farm's purpose of growing food for the pub on community land, locally, across from the pub. 

There are a growing number of other  “community building architects” , who seek to extend  growing, cooking and business skills and to share these between themselves. In the smallest pub we have the largest vision for food and community. 

My evening perked as I chatted, especially the Scot in the group, as I recounted a meeting I had with Alastair Macintosh,  a Scottish academic & author of an inspiring book  “Soil and Soul”. As an activist he helped “the beleaguered residents of Eigg to become the first Scottish community to clear their laird from his own estate”.  He even persuaded a Native American warrior chief to visit the isle of Harris to help “overturn plans to turn a majestic Hebridean  mountain into a super quarry”. Reluctant at first  to talk, it was the sharing of stories that bonded us and all our keen interest in community building around food and hospitality: Soil to Table. 

 Saving their pub from becoming another posh residence and retaining the traditional pub  history and making it again the heartbeat of the community.  This is counter to the trend I observed, where pub life as community central is  diminishing nearly everywhere I visited in the UK. Drinking appears to be done in the  home, with pubs and restaurants  busier during the weekends and are empty for the rest of the week.

Communities crumpled and crippled with house prices, rents and mortgages consuming incomes leaving less money for pleasure. First time buyers, in particular, are finding it excruciatingly difficult,  with demand for council housing and reasonable rents far greater than supply.  At the same time the alliance between financiers and property developers are  investing in sole rental apartments. False communities are being curated in these ‘developments’  apartments with their own gyms/ concessions/ cafes/ convenience stores, built in. Financiers are making  money. 

Communities are being ripped apart but, in a Nutshell, there was the regeneration, the building of communities, with people working together to save those things precious to all of us. something to drink for .