PASSIONATE pub-goers at The Old Crown are set to raise a glass this weekend as they mark 15 years since they became its owners.

Shareholders are due to celebrate the milestone as well as their latest award, The Plunkett Foundation’s Rural Community Cooperative of the Year for the North West, following their AGM on Saturday from 4pm.

In 2003 The Old Crow at Hesket Newmarket, near Caldbeck, became the first cooperative-owned pub in England.

It has since paved the way for other communities determined not to lose their locals.

Julian Ross, chairman of The Old Crown Cooperative, has been involved from the beginning and led the bid by customers to take ownership of the pub.

He said: “It is the most rewarding thing I have ever done. It was hard work in the beginning and it was all-consuming. It was a full-time job alongside my full-time job.

“It is just amazing what people can achieve when they put their minds to it. All I did was facilitate it.

“Saturday is our opportunity to say thank you - not just to the shareholders - but everyone in the community who loves and supports it.”

What makes their journey more impressive though is that they have made a success of The Old Crown at a time when, research shows, an average of 18 pubs are closed every week.

Julian said: “Things have moved on tremendously and the pub has gone from strength to strength.

“It is a viable, thriving, good, happy pub now. That is against a backdrop when the industry has changed enormously.

“It’s not just surviving but increasing its turnover.”

He believes the secret to its success has been the cooperative model, where, as volunteers, they don’t take anything out of the business.

It’s a model that, he says, can make a pub viable in ways not possible if it were commercial.

The pub also has a policy of sourcing locally, everything from produce to the tradespeople it employs.

It’s a venture that has been supported by The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), which recently launched a new initiative calling for changes to policy on Beer Duty, business rates and the Pubs Code to local protect pubs from closure.

“Pubs are vital to our local communities and economies. In many areas and villages they provide the last remaining public meeting space, with meeting halls and post offices already lost,” said a CAMRA spokeswoman.

“They also create jobs and bring money into local areas, which tend to be spent in the local area

“For this reason, we all need to do what we can to ensure that everyone has a local near to where they live and work - once a pub is closed and converted to a shop, or a block of flats, the community never gets it back.”

When asked if he thought The Old Crown would be where it was today, Julian said he hadn’t thought so far ahead.

But he said arguably the most important thing is that as a cooperative, now owned by more than 150 shareholders who want to preserve the pub, The Old Crown is effectively never going to be anything but exactly that.

“They all have a vested interest in helping the pub thrive and that’s not a bad customer base,” Julian continued.

“The attraction for shareholders - even if they don’t live here - is that there is something about knowing that when you go you know what beers are going to be on, what the carpet is going to look like and who is going to be in there.

“In a world that keeps changing its quite nice to know that there is something there and when 150 people think that, that is quite wonderful.

“What we always wanted for The Old Crown was it to stay an ordinary proper, pub and it is a shining example of why people love coming to Cumbria.”

The Old Crown sells food, and has all the traits of a traditional Cumbrian pub, including a darts team, pool table, and local ales.

It has had five different tenants and is currently run by Helen Mumberson and Simon Robson, the son of former owner Robert, who took it on in 2016.