A traditional way to save the village pub (From Craven Herald)

A traditional way to save the village pub

2:21pm Thursday 12th July 2007 in Dales Folk By Newsdesk

THE English country pub has been at the very heart of rural life for centuries.

Some 300 years ago, the poet William Shenstone praised it as a haven from "life's dull round".

A century ago, the Anglo-French writer and politician Hilaire Belloc chose to live here, rather than in Paris, because he loved our pubs and declared that anyone who destroyed them would destroy the very spirit of England.

They have paid an integral part in my own more humble life and one of my great concerns today is the speed at which they are disappearing.

In the 32 miles I drive regularly between Skipton and Kirkby Lonsdale, at least four have disappeared in the past few years and others have opened and closed again with some regularity.

It is heartening, then, to meet a young man who is striving to put a remote 500-year-old Dales inn back into business after it came close to closure. Even more so when he and his family have invested not just money but thousands of hours of back-breaking labour to restore it to its 16th century splendour.

The Craven Arms has served the tiny village of Appletreewick in many guises over the centuries. At one time, it had a petty sessions court room where local villains could be sentenced to a spell in the stocks on the lane outside.

But in recent years, it had fallen onto hard times and many locals felt it was doomed. Then along came young Robert Aynesworth, now 33, who was luckier than some in that his father, David, estate manager at Broughton Hall, also happens to be founder and part-owner of the tiny Wharfedale brewery that produces Folly Ales.

Here was an irresistible combination: a fragment of Dales history at risk, a father already in the beer business, and - the third and perhaps most vital factor - a young man who hated sitting behind a desk but just loved to work in the great outdoors getting his hands very dirty indeed.

Burnsall-born Robert had spent much of his early working life switching jobs since leaving Craven College. He first took manual work restoring heritage buildings, then went off to university in Sheffield to study countryside management.

After that, he became a climbing and caving instructor until, one day to his horror, he actually found himself managing the company he worked for.

"I found myself behind a desk and hated it. I had been working with my hands since I was 10, when I made myself a ferret cage, and finally realised that was I wanted to do."

This was 2005 and, by great good fortune, the Craven Arms came onto the market at the right price.

There is another thriving pub in tiny Appletreewick, the New Inn, and custom at The Craven had slumped. It also needed a huge amount of work. To most would-be buyers, it seemed a decidedly dodgy business risk. To the Dales Family Aynesworth, it was a challenge.

"We started by ripping out all the so-called modern improvements' that previous owners had made," says Robert, sipping a mug of tea in his work-worn overalls. "We reinstated walls that had been knocked through to give the place back its old nooks and crannies that old customers had liked so much.

"We made a feature of an old coal-burning range and my dad knocked up some replacement doors out of old timber and bolts. But when we had finished the drinks side of the pub, there was no room for a restaurant and all Dales pubs need to serve food to survive. So what to do next?"

He could, of course, have built on a stone extension in an unused backyard where the courthouse stood centuries before. But that would have been much too easy.

Instead, he began to research the designs of old "crook-barns" - medieval structures made of A-frames of rough timber, roofed with split logs and covered with heather thatch.

There were said to be just six such structures left in the Dales, and one had just burned down, but Robert researched them and managed to obtain a set of plans from the recent fire-victim.

Here was a worthy challenge for a young man who built his first ferret cage at age 10!

Work began with a strong emphasis on local tradition. The timber came from Bolton Abbey and Broughton Hall. Some of the labour was provided by apprentices from the newly-created heritage skills department at Craven College, one of the most important initiatives in Craven education in the past decade.

The pub and restaurant now provides jobs for 20 people.

And although not quite complete - it still needs the final heather thatch which this awful summer has delayed - the crook barn was ready enough to stage its first-ever function in December, the wedding reception of Robert and fiancée Alison, a Preston lass he met at university in Sheffield.

That was just the latest chapter in a 500-year old romance which has been reborn in the 21st century.

As Robert Aynesworth says: "It gives us all a great sense of achievement to have rescued and restored a tiny piece of Dales heritage using local materials and local labour.

"It is projects like this that keep young people in the Dales and provides them with a social centre as well as a few much-needed jobs."

I'll raise a glass to that. The toast is: the Yorkshire Dales, our historic inns, and the people who have the courage and the dedication to keep them open.