According to an advert in The Tiverton Gazette, The Ruffwell Hotel, on the nain Exeter-Tiverton road just beyond our parish boundary is on the market for offers in the region of £500,000. Given the size of the property this seems a bit on the cheap side.
The Ruffwell has had a somewhat chequered history. When it was tenented by the late Joe and Flo Bailey in the middle of the last century it was a sucessful local pub with sucessful darts teams and later Country and Western nights and had a good local trade from this part of the Exe Valley. Since it became a free house and successive owners tried to move it up market its fortunes have been mixed at best, and lately apparently lately near disasterous, with the current owners coming up with every gimmick in the book in order to revive trade. It would seem they have not been sucessful.
Whether there is any place for the type of hostelty that the Ruffwell is in the age of ever tighter drink drive laws is open to question, but it is certain that if the Ruffwell does not continue as a pub a well known, and once well loved part of the local landscape will have been lost.
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Perhaps if they stopped doing carveries (a.k.a. "school dinners") they might have more success.
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