Family snaps up town pub

A traditional coaching inn in Market Drayton has been sold to a "local business family" for about £200,000. The Corbet Arms Inn, High Street, was sold by estate agents Pooks.

The pub closed in April when brewers Amber Taverns bought it as part of a deal for more than 20 other former Cains pubs, and closed it saying running the pub as a business was not profitable.

Pooks manager Charles Howell said the sale was completed with a business family from the area, whom he believed would run it as a pub.

"We agreed a sale and it's gone to a local business family and the sale was around £200,000," he said.

"As far as I know it's a pub, hotel and restaurant and will reopen it as it was."

Mr Howell said that the pub being reopened would enhance the High Street in Market Drayton because the pub building had "great potential".

"It's good news for Market Drayton to have a property like that brought back to use again and I'm sure it will help the High Street," he said.

"It's got great potential as a property."

Steve Mazan, former pub landlord, said he was delighted to hear the Grade II-listed building had been sold and said he hoped it would be reopened as a village pub.

"I'm really pleased, as long as it's going to be run as it should be and it's not being built on," he said.

"I was gutted when it got boarded up but there's nothing we could have done. We didn't own it, we just ran it so we just had to watch while it was boarded up and there was nothing we could do.

"We had to turn customers away who turned up to try to have a pint."