Village post office wins the top gong in ‘Rural Oscars’

PONTRILAS Post Office and Store near Hereford was named The Daily Telegraph Village Shop of the Year at the annual Countryside Alliance awards ceremony held at the House of Lords yesterday.

Sonya and Nigel Cary, the owners, received their winner’s plaque from Lord Gardiner of Kimble, the minister for rural affairs, and The Daily Telegraph’s Philip Johnston.

Other winners of the so-called Rural Oscars, now in their 13th year, were Quex Barn of Birchington, Kent, in the local food and drink category; The Swan in Enford, Wiltshire (Best Pub); Perrys of Eccleshall in Staffordshire (Best Butcher); and Clinks Care Farm of Toft Monks, Norfolk (Best Rural Enterprise). The Clarissa Dickson Wright Award in memory of the late TV chef and former judge went to The School of Artisan Food in Welbeck, Notts.

An extraordinary food renaissance has taken place in Britain in recent years based around the provision of locally sourced produce. In the countryside, shops, pubs, butchers and rural enterprises are championing high-quality meat, game, cheeses, fruit and vegetables often farmed, shot, made or grown within a few miles’ radius.

For those living in towns and cities, used to seeing their supermarkets stocked with imported foodstuffs all year round, they serve as a reminder of the seasonal delights of home-grown provender. The best examples were on parade at the House of Lords yesterday where the Countryside Alliance staged its 13th awards ceremony known as the Rural Oscars. The Telegraph plaque for Best Village Shop was won by Pontrilas Post Office and Store in Herefordshire.

This is run as a social enterprise and has become the hub of the local community, a meeting place as well as somewhere to shop and, remarkably, still a flourishing post office. It also helps to look after elderly and isolated people in rural areas where traditional support systems like the family and the Church are far weaker than they once were.

The village shop holds lunch clubs for the elderly and has a dementia-friendly arts and crafts café. On Christmas Day, it welcomed 14 villagers for lunch. As Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, observed at the awards ceremony, rural Britain thrives through the dedication and resilience of its unsung heroes. Political discourse is too often driven by metropolitan considerations to the exclusion of rural affairs. This was a celebration of the ingenuity, inventiveness and rootedness of those who form the backbone of the nation.