A KIDLINGTON man has saved a traditional village pub that he has lived down the road from for 47 years from closure.
John Salter, the managing director of boat business Salter’s Steamers, decided to buy his local, The Kings Arms on The Moors, when he found out it the owners Punch Taverns, who own 5,000 pubs across the country, were planning to close it.
John said: “The decision was partly sentimental and partly practical. It’s a family-owned pub and we have been neighbours for quite a long time and are fairly attached to the way the pub has always been preserved rather than changed. It has a very good community following and is a very old pub. A number of pubs have been closing down in Kidlington and we heard that this one would also be included and we didn’t want to see that happen.”
John already owns property business KM Ltd, which specializes in buying and letting property in the Kidlington area. He intends to keep the pub running as it always has but it will now be the only freehouse in Kidlington with his tenants, Gerry and Christine McGrath. He said: “We would like to see things improved but we don’t want to see anything changed, just maintanance. The pub is a stone building dating back to 1817, it’s a traditional village pub, they do traditional food at lunch time, they have two bars and an events room. They have games like Aunt Sally.
"A number of pubs have been closed across the country. It would have gone down very badly with locals if The King’s Arms had closed, they would have been very upset about it," John said.
