'Our pub is a community hub and vital to the whole village'
A small village is a place that clings to its heritage and the residents work to keep the community together.
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This can happen through regular village events, community meetings or, in the case of Hinstock, a pub which has been saved from the brink of extinction and turned back into a vibrant and popular hub.
The village, which is set halfway between Newport and Market Drayton, once had 11 pubs, but the Falcon Inn stands alone as the village pub, having been extensively refurbished and reopened as a pub in October 2023.
It's a pub with more than 200 years of tradition, having been built in the 1820s and renamed as from the Red Lion to the Falcon Inn in 1836 after the two falcons on the family coat of arms for owner Henry Justice.
The pub passed through many hands over the years, including a spell under The Wrekin Brewery Company in the middle of the 20th century, but had laid empty since the last tenants left in December 2022, while a flood had left the cellar severely damaged not long afterwards.
It had looked like the owner of the pub was set to repurpose the pub for residential purposes, but current manager Ashleigh Routley said the residents of the village started a campaign in February 2023 to save the pub.
She said: "It's the last pub in the village as, at one point, there had been 11 pubs, but they'd all closed or begun to close over time and we were left with just the Falcon Inn and after the last tenants left and the cellar flooded, it looked like we might lose it.
