We’ve saved our village...by buying the pub!
First their Post Office shut. Then the only shop. Even Google Maps missed out tiny Banton. But locals were determined to secure the future of their community...
FOR those who live there, it can feel like the village time forgot. Only two miles from one of Scotland’s busiest motorways, it might as well be a hundred for all the attention it attracts from the drivers thundering by.
The Google Street View van, widely supposed to have covered every inch of the land, has yet to make the detour to Banton in Lanarkshire. Even staff at the local authority can be stumped when villagers ring up about services.
‘Banton?’ some have responded. ‘Where’s that?’ As village facilities have disappeared, so the sense of isolation has grown. First to go was the Post Office; then the local shop. After that, the bus service was curtailed to such an extent a journey to the nearest store for a pint of milk was a minimum 90-minute round trip on public transport.
Then came what many residents reckoned would be the fatal blow – word of a planning application to raze the 170-year-old village pub, The Swan Inn, to the ground and build houses in its place.
In less than a decade, much of what had made the difference between a community and a mere collection of houses had been unceremoniously stripped away. The former mining village of Banton, it seemed, was about to become a collection of houses.
But what happened next was a reversal to inspire rural communities across the land. Gathering in one villager’s living room, locals decided enough was enough – and set about staging Scotland’s first community buy-out of a pub.
True, it may not have been what the architects of land reform legislation had in mind when rural Scots were afforded the right to buy a stake in their own communities. The idea was to bring feudal landlords to book – not pub ones.
Yet when the villagers approached the Scottish Land Fund for the money to buy the pub from owner Matthew Scanlon, it handed over £184,000 – some £24,000 more than his asking price.
Now, the 500 residents who call Banton home have received almost £750,000 more from the National Lottery to turn the failing pub into a vibrant community hub, including bar, restaurant, café and shop – due to open next spring.
At a stroke, village life has been transformed.
‘When we first heard the pub may be closing,’ says Catherine Moneypenny, 36, ‘the mood was so low people were saying we just need to put up a Closed sign at the bottom of the road into the village. People who had lived here 40 years were thinking they would have to move because they couldn’t carry on.
‘Now there’s a vision for the future and a confidence in the community that’s night and day from what it was two years ago.’
WHAT happened to Banton has been happening to villages all over Scotland for years. Key amenities have disappeared. In response, residents have turned inwards.
They do their grocery shopping online because the nearest shop is miles away – with the result they see less of fellow villagers. They prefer to drive because the frequency of the buses has been cut.
The more these behaviours become the norm, the more public amenities dwindle and the greater the sense of isolation – particularly among the elderly.
For Mrs Moneypenny, who moved to Banton from Liverpool six years ago when her anaesthetist husband Michael got a job at the Forth Valley Royal Hospital, it felt that the very lifeblood of the welcoming village she had fallen in love with was slipping away.
She said: ‘When we first moved, the Post Office had already been lost but the shop was here and the pub was here and after we’d been to view the house we came to the pub to get a feel for the place. We felt the pub was a real draw.
‘Then we went to the shop and that’s where I met the first people I knew in the village. The function it had was more than just a place to go and buy a loaf of bread. It was where you kept in tune with the village – where you’d meet people on a day-to-day basis.’
It was around two years ago that a handful of residents living closest to the Swan received notice of what they thought was a planning application to demolish the building and replace it with flats. In fact, there was no such application. But Mr Scanlon had made a preliminary inquiry at North Lanarkshire Council to establish whether planning permission for such an option would be likely to be given.
The 74-year-old, who leases the Swan to a publican, says he would never have considered selling it or shutting it as a pub during his lifetime but wanted to know what options may be available after he was gone.
The misunderstanding proved fortuitous because the thought of losing Banton’s last focal point spurred villagers into action.
Surprisingly, perhaps, it was the womenfolk who seemed most horrified by the prospect of their watering hole disappearing. Gathering in Mrs Moneypenny’s living room one evening, an emergency committee comprising several women and just one man tossed around ideas for saving it until someone suggested the possibility of a community buy-out.
‘None of us had any experience in this kind of project,’ says motherof-four Mrs Moneypenny. ‘There’s been a lot of juggling this with children and full-time jobs – but it’s amazing what you can do in time you didn’t think you had.’
What emerged from the meetings and from consultation in the community was how sorely villagers missed their shop – and seeing each other in it – and how vital the local pub therefore was.
Two miles north of the M80, near Kilsyth, Banton had become too sleepy. Supermarket delivery vans were among the most commonly seen vehicles. Shopping, which used to get people out of their homes, now kept them inside. One by one, the building blocks of village life had been removed.
The solution villagers came up with was not simply to ensure the survival of the local pub – but to turn it into a community hub, restoring much of what had been lost in the previous ten years.
First, however, they would have
to persuade the owner to sell – and find the money to buy the place.
Fortunately, Mr Scanlon changed his position on selling when he learned what villagers had in mind for the pub, which meant there was no question of one of the most controversial elements of land reform legislation – a forced sale – being invoked. Indeed, he says he happily settled for £160,000, in view of the community’s plans – when it would have been expected to fetch £180,000 on the open market. It will formally change hands in June.
As for the project leaders – People United for Banton (PUB), as they have taken to calling themselves – they see no difficulty with money from the Scottish Land Fund putting a licensed premises into community ownership.
‘It’s serving an important social function,’ says PUB secretary Mrs Moneypenny. ‘In terms of wellbeing, one of the really important considerations, especially in rural communities, is isolation – and the pub plays a huge role in combating that. Besides, we are expanding it beyond a pub.
‘At the moment, the only way of having social contact is to come and have a drink – and, in the new facility, that will be preserved.
‘But you will have other ways to engage with the community too. You can engage through the shop, there’ll be a café that helps combat isolation in the daytime and you can have a beautiful meal in the restaurant in the evening. There will also be a multi-purpose community space upstairs.’
To bring all that about, villagers have received £740,000 from the Big Lottery Fund, taking the total injection of public money to not far shy of £1million. But it is money well spent, they argue – not just for Banton, but also for creating a model of sustainability for Scottish villages in the future.
Key PUB player Annette Johnston, who has lived in Banton for 30 years, says: ‘Of course, we’re doing it for the people of Banton and for our kids and grandkids and the future of the village – but I’ve always seen this as much more than that. It’s a model that could be applied elsewhere. Other villages could benefit from the same kind of thing.’
ALL profits will be ploughed back into Banton. For a fee of around £25, villagers can become shareholders, giving them a say in how that money is spent.
‘We will have a sustainable business and the village will have an income,’ says Mrs Johnston. ‘Depending on the profits, I see a model that almost reinvents rural living. One of the first things we’ve thought about – and obviously it will be up to villagers themselves – is, wouldn’t it be great if we had a community minibus.
‘Not only could we bring people to the Swan and – more importantly – take them away from it, but we could also provide a service for older people or take the kids swimming. I think it’s really about, rather than being the victims of the times, we reinvent them.’
That first meeting in Mrs Moneypenny’s living room could have been little more than a grumbling session. Instead, a few seeds of optimism were planted and a steely resolve to protect what remained of Banton’s community spirit was quietly born. Now that spirit thrives and, instead of isolation, there is a sense of common purpose.
A year from now, the blueprint for the community hub – by Glenboig-based Bruach Design and Consultancy – will be a reality.
‘We didn’t need to invent our case,’ says Mrs Johnston. ‘We just told it like it was and we fitted the bill. I think it’s a lovely model for the future.’