Alton village campaigners successfully raised enough money to save their oldest village pub after owners, Marston's Inns and Taverns, closed it for 6 months and then put it up for sale.

As a community group we first succeeded in persuading Staffordshire Moorlands District Council to list the building as ‘an asset of community value' in order to delay the sale for several months while we raised the money to purchase the pub and re-open it.

This was under the Community Right to Bid, part of the Localism Act, which allows communities to register buildings and land that play an important part in local life.