Emotions overflow in this Cup

A famous fire fulminates in the bar, candles add gently to the twilight atmosphere. There's real ale, pub games, food that in 1999 stirred the Eating Owt column to superlatives, even about the spinach.

"If it was always this good," we observed, "Popeye would never have married Olive Oyl."

Now, however, the Gold Cup has lost its tarnish. A notice stuck on a telegraph pole announces a proposed change of use to private accommodation - latest in a melancholy parade of rural pubs, said to be one a week, where desperate owners are throwing in the towels.

In Nether Silton, villagers have called a public protest meeting, organised a petition, written to the papers and to the John North column. What they haven't done - the eternal dilemma - is spend enough money at their local.

"Without the pub these communities will slowly disintegrate," says Gordon Dennis, the parish council chairman. "It's an even bigger issue than when the school closed 16 or 17 years ago."

"It's the old, old story, use it or lose it," replies Dudley Martin, the pub's affable owner.

It's one of a group of three hillside villages - Nether Silton, Over Silton, Kepwick - just off the A19 north of Thirsk and with a combined population of around 300.

Fifty crowded the public meeting, three times as many - including a child of six - have signed the petition. "Some of them have never been in the pub in their lives," says the landlord.

"It's a focal point," says the council chairman. "Dudley's within his rights, but if he can't do it, he should offer it to someone else who can."

Though he lives and farms in Nether Silton, Gordon Dennis - the cuckoo in the nest - usually drinks at the Haynes Arms, on the main road two miles away. Though they are civil, it is evident that no great affection exists between the two men.

Dudley claims not even to have been told about the protest meeting. "The first I knew was when I was driving from the house and saw all these cars outside the old school. Someone came in for cigarettes and I asked what was going on."

"Nonsense," says Gordon, or words to that effect.

The Martins have lived in Over Silton for 20 years. He was a senior Barclays Bank man, retired early, bought his 200-year-old local in 1996 because his wife reckoned he spent so much time in there he might as well.

"If I were on the other side of the bar I'd probably be up in arms myself," admits Dudley.

"I never thought I'd be rich but it was a challenge and I thought I could make a living out of it. It was a nice pub, still is, but it's the same old story - there just aren't enough people coming through the doors."

He now opens only on Tuesday to Saturday evenings and Sunday lunchtime, admits that Friday and Saturday are sometimes busy, but was taking only £20 on Sunday and Monday.

Gordon Dennis, who just forgets the name of the six-year-old petitioner - "the children used to buy sweets here" - hints that things might have been done differently, that folk don't want "all this a la carte stuff", that tourists are hardly likely to come if the pub's closed all day.

"These places are viable, but you have to work at it, it doesn't just happen."

So why doesn't he take over the pub himself? "I have enough trouble wi't farm and wi't bloody VAT man," says Gordon.

"You can say that people should support it more, but we live in a free society and it's up to them to make it work.

"You can't hope to sell a place like this on its past trade, because there isn't any past trade."

It's been on the market for several months, attracted just one inquiry - "he lost interest as soon as I mentioned the annual barrelage" - and no viewers.

The North Yorkshire Moors parks committee has deferred a decision. If it grants change of use, he'll probably live in the building himself - "though no one will probably speak to me, mind you."

It's 10.15pm before the debate round the big farmhouse table ends, by which time the parish council chairman is rather contradictorily recalling the business advice his old dad gave him, that if t'oles only getting deeper, you stop digging.

The number of customers has increased to eight, more half empty than half full. In the Gold Cup, only the emotions are overflowing.

Another pub, another petition. Around 2,500 Northumberland folk protested when Wessex Taverns - the very name evokes duff public relations - proposed changing the steady away Black Swan to the horripilant Hairy Lemon. They changed it, anyway.

It re-opened three weeks ago, smells principally of vinegar, leaves a sour taste for other reasons, too. Even the new carpet has a hairy lemon motif.

Though the black swan stained glass remains, an egregious tarpaulin over the old sign announces the re-born identity. The menu shamelessly declares that it is a "Great British Pub", chicken tikka masala sitting (per Mr Robin Cook) alongside the pie and the ploughman's.

Fifty yards further up Narrowgate, happily, the Old Cross remains its rugged self, the dirty bottles from which the pub takes its universal nickname still gathering gubbins in the window.

In the mid-19th Century, it's said, a barman was arranging the bottles in the window when he dropped down dead. Anyway now removing them, adds lugubrious local legend, will suffer the same unfortunate experience.

Its neighbour, meanwhile, is subdued and sanitised and thus as enticing as a dentist's waiting room. The inescapable question is why; the answer a Hairy Lemon.

Summerhouse is smaller still than Nether Silton, just 17 houses and the ever excellent Raby Hunt Inn on the road from Darlington to Staindrop. It is more than on the baying benches of Westminster, alas, that the Hunt is under threat.

Mike Allison, landlord since leaving university a quarter of a century ago, has - like Dudley Martin - applied to change the pub to private accommodation. "Basically we're just not making money any more," says Mike. "Village pubs are no different from village shops and we are struggling to survive.

"Social patterns have changed, trade has been going down for several years, people are drinking at home."

Closure isn't imminent, but if change of use is granted cannot be long delayed. "The thought is quite depressing for us as well," says Mike, "but if we continue much longer we'll be putting money in ourselves every time we open the door. I'm afraid it's just not possible."

THE Publican Newspaper, meanwhile, reports a Campaign for Real Ale initiative to provide better public transport to out-of-the-way pubs. "We regard it as a form of social exclusion - people who want to have a pint should be able to do so by public transport," says CAMRA's Mike Perkins. "It's not just rural areas. In Scarborough there are now no buses in town after 7pm." Really? "Nonsense," says a spokesman for the Scarborough and District Bus Company. "Obviously it isn't as frequent as during the day but all the major estates have an evening service, some until after midnight." On the North Yorks coast, at any rate, they can still be driven to drink.

In the County at Aycliffe Village - where Tony Blair entertained Jacques Chirac a while back, and whence more good news may shortly emerge - we take lunch with Tony and Anne Wright.

He is the retired former Vicar of Tow Law, and sundry other Durham parishes, she a first time author.

Tow Law is at last to have a replacement incumbent, incidentally - the Rev Peter David enticed 12,000 miles from Adelaide lured by videos of his oft-chilly new patch, which will include Satley and Stanley Hill Top.

Anne, meanwhile, is preparing for the launch later this month of The Black and The White, her novel about life and love in a north Durham coastal village - though the title owes everything to Tow Law Town FC, where she remains enthusiastically on the committee.

The book's splendid, its author quite excited. Only the verbose foreword may disappoint - but you've read enough of that garrulous gentleman already.

Published: 03.05.01