Broadwindsor: The shop is on the right, The White Lion pub is beyond. Photograph by Nigel Mykura, resused under Creative Commons Licence.
IT WOULD appear that the bustling community of Boadwindsor is having problems. Both the shop and the pub in the village [The White Lion] look set to close.
Not if The Red Bladder has anything to do with it they won’t.
Like a rat-trap closing on its prey my mind snapped on a solution so simple yet so elegant that I stunned even myself.
The core of the whole thing is that the two buildings are slap-bang opposite each other. There you have it: combine the two and place them under a single management.
That way the doors of the boozer could be sealed up so that no one can enter the premises that way. Make the punters enter the shop where they can pick up a basket and rummage around the grocery department on the ground floor.
Even those hell-bent on pouring booze down their throats may well make an impulse purchase.
Then the shoppers and the sensible people go on upstairs! I knew that you would like this one. There, other things could be on offer. Essentials like haberdashery, millinery and drapery, the day-to-day items that the locals are crying out for.
Now comes the clever bit. Once the enthusiastic shoppers have been loaded up with spare whale bones for corsets, slouch hats and knicker elastic… they cross the newly erected foot bridge to the pub.
This could also double up as a viewing platform where enthusiasts could spot cars, vans and lorries heading for such far-away and exotic sounding locales as Clapton, Coles Cross and Kittwhistle. It would prove a huge attraction in its own right.
Once across the bridge the customers then enter the upper floor of the pub which will now be the coffee lounge and tea room.
As you can see this is not just a place to do a bit of shopping. No, this offers the good people of Broadwindsor and miles around a completely new and unique retail experience.
The lounge serves two purposes. It parts the mugs, sorry I meant valued customers, from more of their dosh and it prevents certain people from getting in the way of the serious business of boozing downstairs in the pub. Which, as we all know, is the sort of place that people who want hot drinks should never, ever be allowed into.
So there you have it, the salvation of a village’s services using only a little imagination.
I demand no fee for this invaluable advice.
It might be nice if the foot bridge over the square were to be named something simple like The Red Bladder Bridge to Paradise but I don’t really mind all that much.
Just to have helped will have been its own reward.
Editor’s Note: Around 200 people met in Broadwindsor’s Comrades Hall to discuss the future of The White Lion and the village shop.
The shop closes on Wednesday, 31 August. It was recently put up for auction but failed to reach the reserve price.
The pub’s licensees are leaving at the end of October. Owners Palmers Brewery are seeking new landlords.
To gauge support for action to save the shop, a questionnaire is being circulated around the Broadwindsor area. One idea is to buy the premises and run it as a community shop, following the example set by Thorncombe (in the far west of Dorset) and Bishop’s Caundle (a few miles from Sherborne).
Some grant funding might be available, as well as a loan from West Dorset District Council, but local people would need to raise about a third of the total amount. The total amount would almost certainly be more than £250,000. (That was the guide price – and also, it would seem, the reserve price at auction, given that £240,000 was bid and turned down).
Other ideas being discussed are a mobile shop, a temporary shop in the Comrades Hall and a facility in premises in the centre of the village currently used as a Saturday morning coffee shop run by the church.
The Red Bladder’s proposal may, at first reading, be considered outlandish, but no one could dispute that it lacks the virtue of imagination. One reason it’s published here is that imagination will certainly be required in Broadwindsor.
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