Love Your Neighbourhood - Eccleshall - video Dailymotion

Express & Star

Daniel Stacey went to Eccleshall to meet the people of the friendly Staffordshire town and find out what they love about it

Transcript

00:00Hi, so I'm Dan Stacey from The Expressing Star and I'm here in lovely Eccleshaw this afternoon

00:05and I'm at the flower shop with Amanda. And Amanda, what is it that you enjoy most about

00:11working in and around Eccleshaw? It's just a really lovely community town. You can't go to the shop

00:20without seeing someone and saying hi, which is really lovely. It's just a lovely, lovely community

00:26town, you don't get any trouble. Everyone knows each other, they're friendly, everyone's out to look out for each other.

00:32It's just a really lovely place to be. Brilliant. And how long have you been working around in Eccleshaw?

00:38So I've been working here for about 25 years. Brilliant. And has it changed much within that time at all?

00:45Yes, as the years go on you see obviously the newer houses being built over the last few years

00:51so you do see new faces coming in. So yes, it is changing a little bit.

00:57But it's still keeping that? It's still definitely keeping that community spirit which is lovely.

01:02I'm now joined with David. David, how long have you been living in Eccleshaw?

01:06Oh, we've been in Eccleshaw now of course, since 1989 we moved to Eccleshaw, so that's 36 years ago now.

01:13It's a pleasant place to live. Good community spirit here. It's grown a lot over the past few years

01:19which some people say is a bad thing for Athens. It's not a good thing really. It's like a huge bump to the village.

01:26What is it then that's changed in your opinion?

01:30Just a demographic, there's a lot of younger people here now than there used to be.

01:34There's loads of societies and groups here. If you want to do something you can get involved here.

01:39There's something you can do.

01:41Ranging from local community things to sports churches, we've got tennis club, cricket club.

01:47We've got an actual football club just on the road there, about Marlborough, who played in Northwest Cancers League.

01:53Which is quite a high standard for local football. And there are a lot of youth teams as well.

01:59There's the Eccleshaw Society. If you look around you can see all the flowers and baskets.

02:04That's all for the five volunteers.

02:07So they raise funds to plant everything up.

02:10One of our local nurseries plants them up for us.

02:13People erect them and they make a brilliant display during the summer months.

02:18Lovely, sir.

02:19I'm now joined with Martin, the landmower company at Eccleshaw.

02:23Martin, just tell me a little bit about your business here and Eccleshaw in general.

02:28Well, this in 1903 was a plough shop and all the single ploughs would be scattered down the street.

02:36Six years ago I had the lease on it and I fitted the pub out as old fashioned as I could.

02:44And from that day we called it the Ecclion.

02:47Really designed for Eccleshaw people. That's the whole idea of the pub.

02:52And it's a very, very busy pub. But it is a local community pub. That's exactly what it is.

02:58Brilliant. And you tell me that it's at the heart of the community.

03:02And just tell me a little bit about the event that happened here on Saturday around Eccleshaw.

03:06Well, we had the Eccleshaw festival, which is normally a biannual event.

03:11But this time we've had it two years on the trot where we have 50 stores down the street.

03:17The roads closed. We have a big stage. We had the lack of commitments.

03:21We had Joe Fuller singing. We had local people singing and performers.

03:27Fantastic day. We had a very large choral choir from Logheads.

03:31They had about 40, 50 people. Everybody's out in the streets.

03:35Everybody's drinking and eating. Just a fantastic community day.

03:40All arranged by a lady called Lorraine Conkey.

03:43We pulled it together.

03:45And what sort of part does your business play within that day then?

03:49We just make sure there's plenty of drinks being served.

03:52That's what we're here for.

03:54We had an outside bar there.

03:56And we had all the seating arranged.

03:58We had about 160 seats outside. It was packed all day.

04:01People were dancing in the street. A proper party atmosphere.

04:05Brilliant. And even on days where there might not be that larger scale event,

04:10are you still a hustling bustling sort of venue?

04:13Yes. I think over the last few years, the weekends in Eckershall has become very much a destination place to visit.

04:23We're quite fortunate. We've got very few empty properties relative to places like Stone and Stafford.

04:31And then the eating hostel that we have and the facilities for drink.

04:38It makes it a destination place of a weekend.

04:42And we're noticing a lot of people come from outside to come to Eckershall.

04:46Brilliant.

04:47We'll see you guys next week.

04:48See you next week.

04:50Bye.

04:51Bye.

04:53Good.

04:55Bye.

04:56Bye.

04:58Bye.

04:59Bye.

05:01Bye.

05:02Bye.

05:03Bye.

05:05Bye.

05:06Bye.

05:07Bye.

05:10Bye.

05:11Bye.

05:12Bye.

Love Your Neighbourhood - Eccleshall

Category

Transcript

Recommended