Thread by @Telegraph

🌳The village that broke free

An ailing Lancashire community is now the poster child for a movement that might change rural life for ever⁠.
⁠
The library, shop, community centre and pub are all owned and run by the people who call Trawden home

🧵
telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/0…

🌳An ageing population, local-authority neglect and regional underfunding: Trawden’s decline followed a pattern repeated in rural communities across the country and around the world
telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/0…

Steven Wilcock, the 67-year-old founding father of the extraordinary initiative says:

🗣️"Something had to be done or our community spirit might never recover"

🏘️When Steven was a boy, his parents were always popping into the community centre – ‘tea dances, whist drives, the luncheon club’ – and, in 2014, when the local authority offered it to the villagers for £1, he swiftly secured the approval of his fellow parish councillors

Phase two, the villagers’ acquisition of the erstwhile part-time library and a conjoined mother-and-baby centre that had long since closed its doors, stretched into three years of meetings with Lancashire County Council officials, which drove Wilcock to the brink of despair

Wilcock told the council: "I guarantee we will bring more footfall into that building in the next 12 months than you’ve had in the last 30 years.”

🗣️'It was a brave thing to say, but I was right’ he says

♻️That was in 2017, several years on, the entirely rebuilt, communally run library has solar panels on the roof and a ground-source heat pump.

The former health centre beside it is now the compact but astoundingly well-provisioned village store

🛒‘I think this place had to be different,’ says Jane Rushton, 65, in the community shop’s Filling Station – where locals top up their own jars, bottles and bags with everything from mung beans to toilet cleaner

If the successful launch of these initiatives pays tribute to a determined few, what sets Trawden apart is the village’s dedication to keep them going

Molly Ralphson says she’s never once failed to fill a shift at the shop. ‘Trawdeners always help each other out,’

🏘️Read the full long-read ⬇️
telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/0…