POWER TO THE PEOPLE (PLUS PINTS AND PORK PIES)

Redoubtable, reliable and resistant to radical change; there are few things in the typical English village more valued by residents than the shop and the pub

- Rob Crossan

THE VILLAGE SHOP SAVIOUR

Ruth Anderson

“I really did have no idea just how much people love pork pies until I started doing this!”

So says Ruth Anderson, resident of the remote Cumbrian village of Kirkoswald for the last 12 years and one of the leading voices behind the rescue of the village’s last surviving shop.

“So far we’ve sold 195 kilos of bananas, 360 pork pies and £1,400 worth of locally made sandwiches and cakes, says Ruth, calculating the booming sales that have made the cash register trill in the first six months the shop has been open.

Once home to seven shops in its Victorian heyday, when there was a regular market in the village, Kirkoswald’s very last store closed during the early stages of the pandemic when the owner died from the coronavirus.

“It was incredibly sad, but we really had to move fast to make sure that the shop didn’t close for good,” said Ruth.

“It became pretty clear that the trust that owned the shop were going to disinvest in various things and our shop was going to be one of them. So we managed to save it before it became mothballed.”

Ruth and a group of fellow villagers began a share scheme to raise the £200,000 needed to save the shop. With shares priced at just £25 each their community benefit society operated on the proviso that it didn’t matter how many shares you bought, everybody got one vote.