Community-run pub seeks tenant

The Baldons and Nuneham Community Society has managed to raise £100,000, with the help of locals pledging shares of between £300 and £20,000.

The group bought the pub off a local businessman for £275,000, with Phil Collins, one of the society’s organisers and a member of the Save the Seven Stars Campaign, adding that the current owner offered the group an “advantageous loan” so it could take on the site.

He explained that the society will continue its fund-raising so that it can refurbish the pub and increase the number of covers.

“We want to secure the future of the Seven Stars for the benefit of the community,” said Collins. “This pub is a part of history and is the hub, not only of Marsh Baldon, but the villages and communities around it.

“The Seven Stars has been very successful in the past and can be in the future. We have looked at the figures and forecasts and believe it has great potential. We not only have huge support in the village but there is potential custom from businesses nearby for lunchtime trade, and Oxford is on our doorstep.”

He added: “We don’t want to run the pub. We know that takes time that we don’t have. We want to lease the pub to a professional, to run it as a business.”