Every time I come up through the village square and look over at The Drewe, I’m always devastated to see our great pub closed, as I know you are.

It’s particularly frustrating now that the summer’s here. With the sun shining, people should be packing our square as they used to, in and out of the pub, pints and food in hand, catching up with friends and neighbours. It’s heart-breaking that we can’t...yet.

Behind the scenes the team are on the mission to get The Drewe back open and we have all been working hard on the less glamorous stuff: the business plan to make sure the numbers stack up, the marketing campaign so we can reach as many investors as possible, big and small, and ensuring that the share-offer and wider fundraising plans are in place. To do all this, and do it properly, obviously takes time.

We have the safety net of the ‘Asset of Community Value’ in place, making it much harder for any rival bidder to sweep in and snap up the pub to do as they like with, that is not of ‘community value’.

As you can imagine though, our major preoccupation is money. Our calculations for buying the pub, preparing it for opening, and ensuring cash flow over the initial trading period, means we need to raise significant funds through the community share offer. There is no skirting around that. We think we can do it! But, it will require a lot of people backing the bid, investing whatever they can. At this stage, we know there is so much good feeling for our pub but we have no idea how this will convert to money (investors/share-holders), and in turn how much individual share-holders may be prepared to invest.

With that in mind, we are putting together a ‘Pledge Campaign’ which we will be launching towards the end of June. This will give us a clearer picture of what we may be able raise from you and our support base; how much we need to grow that base and what we may need to do to encourage larger individual share-holdings – all critical for fine-tuning the actual share offer campaign. It will also, hopefully, give us the confidence to officially place our bid for the pub and activate some of the grant applications.

So please Watch This Space! It would be amazing to get The Drewe Arms back open and serving again and we hope, given the strength of feeling, that many will want to own a piece of this unique pub: its bricks and mortar (and cob), its front bar and serving hatch, its infamous Long Room and its beer garden, not to mention all the intangibles (history and endless memories) that this special pub possesses.

Please look out for The Pledge Campaign in the coming weeks and let us know how much you might be willing to put towards our bid for The Drewe Arms Community Pub, and please do all you can to encourage others to do the same.

We are so grateful for all the support you have shown. Together we can, and will, get The Drewe open again!

Toby Rubbra