Community owned Salford pub, The Star Inn, is celebrating 15 years as a beacon of social enterprise.
The pub was saved by locals in 2009 after its brewery owners threatened to close it.
Harry Mansfield, the treasurer of Star Cliffe Ltd and a member of the committee, said: “I think they gave us about two, three months notice. They just said, it’s closing in three months time, and that’s it. It’s all over.”
But the community came together to save the pub in Back Hope Street, committing their money to keep it open.
Harry was one of the original investors.
He said: “We had six benefactors who actually were in initially putting down capital, and then other people joined in with them, giving what they could.”
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The community has kept the pub going ever since.
The building is nearly 180 years old and is expensive to maintain. The committee has spent around £30,000 on it in the past two years.
Despite many similar pubs closing, Harry believes The Star has survived because the area around it is like its own village.
The pub is in a great location near Kersal Wetlands – tucked down an alleyway between cobbled streets intermittently marked with Victorian lanterns which emanate warm light.
Harry said:”You’ve got families and big extended families who’ve lived here for years, and people went to school with each other, things like that, and their kids went to school with each other.
“You’ve got friendship groups linked to that, and then you’ve got the community in general, independent people, but all those people make up the village that come in here.
“It was great, really, that we’d managed to get through 15 years and celebrate it.”
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