‘Now the village is dead. It’s awful’: why was one of Britain’s best pubs forced to close?

For 400 years, The Hare and Hounds in Bowland Bridge offered a warm welcome to locals and travellers. Then the rent doubled. With two pubs a day closing in England and Wales, can the community save this 17th-century gem?

The Hare and Hounds in Bowland Bridge, a few miles from Windermere, is exactly how you’d want a Lakeland pub to be. A pretty 17th-century stone building, whitewashed, with a couple of dormer windows poking up from the slate roof and a view of the fells, it was originally a coaching inn on the route from Manchester to Glasgow.

It is not, however, looking its best today. We arrive in a proper Cumbrian downpour. It should be warm and welcoming, with a place by the wood-burner to dry out and down a pint of Wainwright, perhaps. But the door is shut, the curtains drawn in one of the downstairs windows and no sign of life through the other. Attached to the front of the building is a sign; not a pub sign (the name of the pub is painted elegantly in grey over the door), this one has another message: FOR SALE.