A brief history of how the village of Shapwick came to own the Anchor:

In January 2006 a rumour abounded that the Anchor was to be sold for redevelopment as the lease was put on the market. A next door neighbour of the pub, Bernard Kuflik, suggested to villagers that they form a consortium and club together to buy the lease. No-one was interested. They were, they averred, only interested in the freehold which was then owned by a family in Jersey and was not for sale!

That very same week the Jersey owners’ representative was spotted enjoying an ale in the Anchor. He was invited to hear a proposal from villagers at the Mansion House in Poole. During that dinner the villagers’ offer to purchase the Anchor was accepted. The owners even reduced the price by tens of thousands of pounds in order to retain some shares for themselves! Now Shapwick villagers, from pensioners to toddlers, people who have called Shapwick home for generations to the recently settled, wealthy and not so wealthy, all owned shares in their pub with investments ranging from £500 to £100,000.

The landlord at the time was incandescent with rage (it transpired that he had designs of his own for the Anchor and was livid to find them thwarted….) and promptly barred the main protagonists from their own pub. They were dubbed the ‘Shapwick Six’ and became legends in their own lunchtimes by appearing in the national press, on the radio and television in the same week. They remained barred for the next nine months until the defeated landlord sold his lease to a new tennant.

With our new tenant, we added a private dining room, converted the barn into a lavatory suite and built new kitchens at the Anchor. The pub was updated and refurbished throughout (and there are still little finishing touches being made daily!). Early in the New Year of 2011, our tennant confided to Bern that he’d like to concentrate his attentions on his other business and he offered the consortium first refusal on the lease, upon which we duly completed the purchase in April. It’s been quite a journey…….