Village pub gets new tenants after three years
Moira KayVillagers who raised more than £300,000 to save their local pub are celebrating after finding a new tenant after three years.
The Fishers Arms in Horncliffe, near Berwick-upon-Tweed, shut in 2021 but reopened in December 2023 after a fundraising drive to make it a community asset.
Its first tenants quit within three months, but now a new couple, William and Mary Ndeme, has arrived to take the burden off a team of volunteers.
William Ndeme, who has been a chef for 23 years, said everyone had been "very supportive and welcoming" so far.
Moira Kay, one of the volunteers, said the tenants "seem brilliant so far".
"We had quite a few applicants but none of them were suitable," she said.
"We finally managed to secure some people that have been in hospitality all their life. So we're very relived now."
Kay said the pub was important to Horncliffe's 403 residents.
Before the pub closed in 2021, the village had just lost its post office and shop.
"The village is a dead end, so there's no street traffic or anything and we've got a fantastic village hall, but obviously that's organised events, whereas the pub's just spontaneous," she said.
"There's always somebody to talk to."
Some of the volunteers had been working 14-hour days to keep the venue open.
Villagers aged in their 80s were even taking on short shifts, Kay said.
The volunteers have offered the new tenants one month of free volunteering to get them settled in, then Kay said: "It's entirely up to them what they do."
The official takeover happened on 8 July and was attended by the Mayor of Berwick and local Labour MP David Smith.
"So hopefully once the word gets out there that there's food back on and it's open most of the time, we'll get the business built up again," Kay said.
