On June 15th TDR Heritage (with Shropshire Council) and Lincolnshire County Council have planned a one day event for the national beer day, Beer Day Britain.

A symposium live over the web with speakers covering a broad range of topics from the historic place of the pub in the landscape to the hard economics of a modern business.

Rural pubs are a key part of the English landscape and they’ve been under a lot of commercial pressure in recent years – worsened by the impact of COVID19 across the hospitality industry. Sometimes the historic significance of old pubs is only revealed when they are demolished or converted to new uses, at a point where the magic of a pub as a place where community comes together, a place hosted by the landlord or landlady, is already lost.

Historic England is funding two projects to investigate the past and future of rural pubs. These are focused on the contrasting landscapes of coastal Lincolnshire (Inns on the Edge) and rural Shropshire (Inn Sites). These projects deploy a combination of heritage knowledge and specialist commercial expertise to understand the pressures on these businesses and the opportunities for them to thrive and innovate in a challenging environment. The Lincolnshire Project will also explore the landscapes in which these historic pubs sit and how publicans, locals and visitors make these places.

These projects are intended to help pub operators, communities and local authorities to sustain rural pubs as going concerns, not frozen in time, but with their special physical and social qualities intact.

The event will be recorded and available on web for those who can’t virtually be there on the day