A GROUP of village residents who campaigned to buy their local pub are celebrating success after it officially reopened this week.

The Burley Woodhead Pub Company was set up earlier this year to buy The Hermit Inn in Burley Woodhead and after some renovation work the historic inn reopened on Monday.

A spokesperson for The Burley Woodhead Pub Company said: “It has been a challenging six weeks as we have peeled back the layers of neglect on this historic inn, but we were determined to open for the community as soon as possible.

“You’ll find a great range of beers and cask ales. Ed Kellett, our new Bar Manager, is a real ale hero and is passionate about serving the perfect pint. He has curated a fantastic core beer line up and will be bringing you his own choice of regular guest ales that he thinks are worthy of serving at The Hermit.

“You’ll find a first class wine list, to suit every taste and budget, supplied and chosen by Ilkley’s very own Martinez Wines. You’ll find a tempting selection of spirits, mixers and soft drinks. But sadly, you won’t yet find a traditional pub kitchen. Fixing this particular black hole was just not possible in the time we had available. So whilst we work on the kitchen as phase 2, you can enjoy a delicious range of wood fired sourdough pizzas cooked fresh to order from our outside catering pod. These are available between 12 noon and 3pm and then again 5pm to 8pm.

“Opening the pub in this way allows us to take our time getting the kitchen right and more importantly, it gives us the chance to find the perfect head chef.

“We will be making continual improvements to The Hermit for the next few months, so please bear with us if any areas of the pub are off limits on a particular day to allow these works to continue. The Hermit had been abandoned by the big chains, they said it was too small to be profitable, and too remote to be worth saving. We, a small group of locals, disagreed, and have worked tirelessly to reopen it. But we are aware that we won’t have got everything right and that at first there may be teething problems. So please let our team know directly how you think we are doing and tell us what we could do to make it better. With your help we can keep improving The Hermit and save it as a community asset for generations to come.”