The Swan With Two Necks
A cutting from the editorial floor to get you pumped for my full story, published on Wednesday 3 July.
This story will be published in full on Wednesday 3 July by Pellicle. The Swan With Two Necks is a local institution here in the Ribble valley, and I’m thrilled to be singing its praises on such a large platform, to readers all over the world.
In 1990, The Swan With Two Necks also became a Post Office branch.
“Basically there was nowhere else, so the Post Office rang us and asked us if we could do it,” says Christine Dilworth, the Swan’s landlady. “We were one of the first pubs to do this.”
The Post Office work, which Christine used to do two mornings a week, put them in touch with locals who they’d never normally see, who began to come in for their lunch and stay for a chat. Then, they started to have issues with the combined businesses.
“The Horizon computer just wouldn’t balance,” explains Christine.
“Then a local Post Office was robbed, and I decided I couldn’t do it on my own anymore. It was a shame really, because the week we decided to close our Post Office branch, the one in Barrow closed too.”
Barrow is a small village around five miles away from Pendleton, and despite the obvious stress of running an extra business on top of a very busy local pub, and their near miss with the Horizon IT scandal, it’s still clear to see that Christine still feels that her duty is with the local community.
Read the full piece on Pellicle from Wednesday 3 July!
When we think about pubs and the difficulties they face, our experiences are often clouded by the extremities of the Covid 19 pandemic and its long-reaching problems for the hospitality industry. The truth is, and this was underlined many times by both Christine and her husband Stephen when I spoke to them, that running a pub has never been an idyllic way of life. As well as its positives, it has always been fraught with outside interference and hardships.
The Dilworth’s close call with what later became the Horizon computer scandal is just one story of many that shows how precarious a pub owner’s livelihood can be. It is never a simple case of owning the pub, choosing the beers, serving the customers. There will always, unfortunately, be businesses to please, contracts to honour, and outside interests to fight off. That Christine wanted to double her workload to become the village’s only post office desk whilst running a very busy pub is testament to her dedication to her role in the centre of her community—but it also shows how people with the best intentions are taken advantage of. Had things turned out differently, The Swan With Two Necks could have been yet another Horizon scandal victim, or worse, and it doesn’t escape my mind that this would have meant almost certain closure.
That we still have The Swan With Two Necks with Christine and Stephen at the helm is a minor miracle—you’ll read all about it tomorrow—and one I don’t take for granted. They are part of the generation of publicans that truly live and breath their craft, and I’m grateful to learn from them, and call them my friends. When they finally retire, I’m not sure how the local pub scene will look. But then, it’s not their job to uphold standards for everybody. They simply love running their pub, and they do it well. I can only hope there are still people out there who want to do the same. I certainly don’t think I have the mettle for it anymore.