Villagers lose battle to save the Black Horse Inn

Dec 5 2009 by Neil McKay, The Journal

VILLAGERS have lost a battle to save their much-loved pub after civic bosses decided they were powerless to intervene in a battle with the landlord.

The Black Horse Inn at Cornsay, near Lanchester, County Durham, was a picture-book rural pub which had overlooked the village green for more than 200 years. Its restaurant was famed for miles around, and Sunday lunches were so popular diners had to book well in advance.

The late Sir Bobby Robson and his wife Lady Elsie were regular visitors at one time.

But lately trade has tailed off, and owners Gary and Jane Nattrass applied for planning permission to convert it into a family home.

Despite objections from 24 of Cornsay’s 42 inhabitants, in addition to the local parish council, Durham county councillors reluctantly decided they could not block the application.

Locals blamed Mr and Mrs Nattrass for allowing the pub’s trade to fall away, but Mr Nattrass told the meeting of the council’s planning committee some objectors to the pub’s closure had only visited it “three or four times in four years.”

He said it was “deeply upsetting” to be blamed for allowing trade to fall off, and blamed drink driving laws, the smoking ban and cheap drink from supermarkets for the decline of the pub industry.

He added: “Pubs are a different animal to what they were 10 or 20 years ago. The amount of For Sale and To Let signs you see bear testimony to that.”

But Tom Thompson, chairman of the Cornsay Residents Association, claimed Mr and Mrs Nattrass “were not publican types,” and said: “During one period between Christmas and New Year they went off to Prague and left the pub in the hands of local staff. When the airport was snowed in and they could not get back, it was closed for two days. What sort of way is that to run a business, closing it at the busiest time of the year?”

He added: “We have no shop, no post office, no community meeting place in Cornsay. We used to hold our residents’ association meetings in the pub, but the atmosphere became so strained we now hold them in a pub three miles away.”

He added: “The pub was the landmark and the hub of the village in a beautiful setting overlooking the village green. Without it Cornsay is no more than a collection of houses without a communal heart.”

But councillors accepted the recommendation of their planning officer to approve the conversion due to “prevailing market forces.”