Battle at pub with no cheer

When is a pub not a pub? When it's the Tally Ho in the pretty Corvedale village of Bouldon.

Downstairs in Glen and Val Woodward's black-and-white brick 'home' there is still a bar, still shelves on the walls with rows upon rows of drinking glasses. It still has a working cellar and whenever the couple want to use the back door they have to traipse through the boozer.

When they were first publicans here, this used to be a thriving inn - up until the time of foot and mouth in 2001, when, says Glen, people stopped coming and never returned.

"We used to sit at the table in the window and play spot the walker," says Glen. "Trade dropped by 75 per cent. The walkers who would come past disappeared and never came back."

As the Tally Ho struggled to recover in the wake of the outbreak, the whole pub trade, particularly in sparsely populated rural communities such as Bouldon, was starting to struggle.

In April 2006, Glen describes how the watering hole finally succumbed to dwindling trade and mounting debts and closed down.

Glen and Val own the building outright and, still living above the business premises as they did when they ran the boozer, they consider it their home. But two years on "the pub that isn't a pub" is caught up in red tape, a sort of booze trade Groundhog day . . . because it is a building whose chief use is as a pub.

Despite two applications to planners, Glen cannot get change-of-use approval from a hostelry to a house, which means he and his wife now live upstairs in a property that downstairs looks forever to remain a museum.

"I can walk through it but I cannot live in it," says Glen. "The bar downstairs cannot be taken out because it's classed as a pub. We just want to turn it into our house.

"It's our home but we've got to go through through the bar to get to our front door and go through the cellar door to get to the side entrance.

Predicament

"We do not want to move - all we wanted was change of use to turn it into a house. It's the law that we cannot live downstairs."

Val describes the predicament as "living in no-man's land", adding: "We cannot do anything with it. We cannot sell it. We cannot live a normal life. We own it but we can't do anything with it."

Glen and Val, who now run a mobile truckstop near Craven Arms, have tried to get change-of-use approval before - first in the summer and later the autumn of 2005. Both times the application was rejected.

While the wrangle dragged on, they decided to put the pub up for sale.

"I put it up for sale for 23 months," says Glen. "It did not sell. We had two people come to see it - one was not interested when he saw where it was, and the other couple said it was too far out. We never received an offer, ever."

The point is that here was a rural pub, in a community where there are half a dozen dwellings which don't all use the facility and where passing trade is at the mercy of weary ramblers descending the Clee Hills.

It's pretty much the picture for many of the county's rural pubs.

There are dissenters in all this, of course. Planners for South Shropshire District Council refused the application for change of use because they felt that "no supporting evidence has been submitted to properly consider and establish that the premises are no longer commercially viable and justify the loss of this Inn".

Local campaigners have voiced their views that they don't want change of use granted because they'd rather have a pub. And if it can be sold in the future it could be brought back to life. Diddlebury Parish Council also objected to the "loss of amenity".

Nobody wants to see pubs close. But at a time when the glass is half empty in the pub trade, what does the predicament of the Tally Ho mean for other failed pub buildings?

Most towns, and some villages, have a boozer or two where, over the door where the name of the landlord used to be, is now a sign bearing the words 'to let', 'for sale', or even the question for modern times: Can you run this pub?

"There are all these pubs going to stand empty if they are not going to grant permission for them to be houses," says Glen, who reveals the pub no longer holds a licence. "They will just board them up."

Turning his attention back to the future of the Tally Ho (there is no longer a sign outside to indicate its name), Glen sighs and says: "I don't know what to do.

"They are basically trying to force us to keep it as a pub, but it's not viable. We don't get any subsidy like the farming community. It's bureaucracy gone mad."

It remains unclear whether the Woodwards will appeal the planning decision. They are currently keeping their cards close to their chests, but one suspects the wrangle isn't over yet.

In the tiny village of Bouldon, everyone is talking about it. And it's just the type of story you might expect to hear in a pub.