Community council elections to take place in autumn eastlothiancourier.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from eastlothiancourier.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A DISUSED phonebox in the heart of Pencaitland has been brought back to life by volunteers. The phonebox, at the junction of the village’s Main Street and Lempockwells Road, has become an informal swap shop over the last few years. The former BT phonebox has now been refurbished and repainted and new shelving added by a team of local volunteers led by carpenter and artisan Adrian Hickey. Ralph Averbuch, Pencaitland Community Council chairman, said: “We had been using the phonebox as an informal swap shop for years and thought it may be up for the chop when BT made another round of cuts of public phoneboxes.
FOOD could be the secret to keeping a village’s pub alive. Pencaitland’s Winton Arms is currently closed but newly approved plans suggest the introduction of cooked food could give it a future. Caledonian Heritable Ltd was given the green light by East Lothian Council, with the Edinburgh-based developer outlining the need for things to change at the pub. A spokesperson for the group said: “It is not always the case that when a public house closes its doors because it becomes financially unviable, it merely takes another landlord to give it a quick makeover then reopen. “Sometimes the owner of closed public house premises is required by financial necessity to look at other uses that the buildings can be put to, or indeed whether the buildings can be taken down and something else such as housing built in their stead.
Plans to adopt Pencaitland phonebox and keep it as swap shop eastlothiancourier.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from eastlothiancourier.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
FRESH food could be on the menu in a bid to breathe new life into a village pub. Pencaitland’s Winton Arms is currently closed but Caledonian Heritable Ltd is looking to ensure the business has a future. The Edinburgh-based developer was given permission in September last year to transform part of the pub into a restaurant. Amended plans are now with East Lothian Council, which show space outside for bicycles and an electronic vehicle charging point. Among the inside changes is the layout on the ground floor of the pub. Ralph Averbuch, chairman of Pencaitland Community Council, was confident that most people would be pleased to see a continued commitment to ensuring the building had a future.