Council reject plans to demolish village pub near Oswestry

The council’s planning committee rejected plans to demolish the Plough Inn on Station Road in Weston Rhyn and turn it into housing for a second time.

The pub which was still open until last year has been a part of the village for over a century and would have been demolished to make way for four new houses.

In the application made by Design and Planning Associates Limited on behalf of the applicants Mr and Mrs D J McCarthy they argued that “Architecturally, the buildings on the site are arguably not of a form, quality or of sufficient historic interest to reach the threshold either for statutory or local listing.

“Though they (like countless others in the neighbourhood) quietly illustrate the story of a medieval agricultural landscape populated and infilled by industrial functions in the mid to late 19th century.”

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They added that “the communal value of the buildings, certainly high in the 19th and early 20th centuries as one of the beer houses in the locality, has lapsed, with a dwindling clientele leading to the closure of the Plough as a public house in late 2023.”

However Shropshire Council rejected these claims and said in their decision that “the proposed development would “result in the loss of a community facility” without “sufficient justification provided for its loss”.

“The proposed development would result in the loss of a non designated heritage asset," the council said.

"The Plough is considered as a non- designated heritage asset due to its age and group value in relation to the other non-designated heritage assets which are likely to have been as a result of the collieries in the area, canal, railway and its rural agricultural context.

“It is considered that the scale of the harm would be significant.”

The council added that this harm would not be outweighed by the public benefit of building new housing, with the statement concluding: “It is considered that the proposed development would result in limited benefits, however would result in a significant impact.”