Kettering village pub looks after its community

An award-winning pub in a village near Kettering has been putting its community before profits to help during the coronavirus pandemic.

Volunteers at The Red Lion in Cranford's High Street, joint-winner of last year's Pub of the Year prize at the county food and drink awards, are running a free groceries and essentials delivery service to those forced to stay indoors in the surrounding villages.

They started offering the service to people in Cranford because online supermarket delivery slots were limited and many of the village's elderly didn't want to risk going to a shop.

Demand was so high co-owners Richard Gordon and Sonja Harvey, as well as four volunteers, then began delivering items including meat, vegetables, cheese, cakes and toilet rolls to surrounding villages including Twywell, Lowick and Grafton Underwood.

And they've been so busy they were are between 200 and 300 people a week with all deliveries completely contact-free.

Richard said: "We didn't want to just shut the doors, our pub is at the heart of the community.

"A lot of people are scared to go out and they don't want to run the risk, so they need our help."

They also set up a food bank donation point in the pub's smoking shelter and started selling BBQ packs during the crisis.

They ended up selling so many they were able to donate £1,000 to the Kettering Food Bank in the town's Alexandra Street, which has been three times as busy since the coronavirus lockdown began in March.

Richard added: "Now's not the time to make money.

"Now's the time to look after the community and for everyone to stick together.

"We are very fortunate that we have lovely homes and we can go out and get food but there's other people that can't do that."

Kettering Food Bank volunteer Jane Calcott said: "We are absolutely over the moon about the donation. It's helped us tremendously."

The Red Lion owners also took over The Snooty Fox in Lowick at the end of January.

They started a major refurb but works have been delayed by the current pandemic.