During the past couple of days, I’ve had some friendly chats with Steven Blair, who has managed the Allendale Inn for two and a half years now, and I’ve cobbled together a few notes to present here. I caught up…
Category: Business
The oil cooperative
Denise Williams writes to tell us about the Oil Buying Cooperative: “Every month, the volunteer-led Allen Valleys Oil Buying Cooperative invites its members to take advantage of savings on oil prices by ordering in bulk. Allen Valleys Oil Buying…
Neighbourly half-Wednesdays at the Chemist
Back in early August of last year, a sign suddenly appeared at the chemist: This Business is Under New Management, as of 1st August. And yet Claire Jackson, pharmacist over at least the past decade and so well-respected for her…
‘A hive of activity’ at the Dale Salon
Lindsey Weatherson greeted me cheerfully at the door as I stomped inside from the flurry of wet snowflakes drifting down, and we sat quietly beside the hair dryer to chat about the Dale Salon, a business she took over some…
Dale Manor, crown of a 5 year project
About five years ago a group of local folks made a short-term cash investment (but a long-term tangible investment) in the community by helping Linda and Tony Beck purchase the crumbling Dale Hotel, with a view to increasing the number…
Eviction Notice for Dalek & Shed
The shed housing the Dalek stands inconspicuously enough beside the basement Museum of Classic Sci-Fi. Could you, could you really make it up? I wonder. The idea of a Museum of Classic Science Fiction, in the heart of Allendale, when…
The golden heart of the village . . .
‘Coeur de lion’ was the given title of King Richard I, while in exile in Brittany, France, after his escapades in the Crusades, or as he became known later throughout the British Isles, Richard the Lion-Hearted. Intriguing, then, that The…
MarketPlace: 3 in one!
It’s a Visitor Information Point It’s a Post Office with Money Machine I was just chatting with a good friend about the heroic stint Elsie Archer put in, maybe a decade ago now, when the Post Office was between owners…
The BaynesTravel enterprise . . . steady as she goes
The big ‘B’ is everywhere, as I found to my delight when catching photographs at the beginning of this little diary. All the vehicles seem to start, and finish, here in the yard around the Hen House, but they travel…
The butcher is open . . .
I had a little chat yesterday with affable Joe Mews, the butcher now running Allendale Butchers, in Kirton House next to the Allendale Co-op. Joe kicked off the New Year in fine fettle by keeping Allendale Butchers open, and he’s…