AT a time and in a manner suited entirely to their own convenience and cupidity the absentee landlords of Okehampton’s White Hart Hotel will be fawning all over this neighbourhood, soliciting support, patronage and above all, our money.

Prime amongst their targets will be the local business community, those who recognise the value, and have worked hard towards the creation and maintenance, of an impression and appeal for which they receive little credit but must have been good enough to attract the attention of their new neighbour in the first place.

In continuing to allow this centrepiece property to present as an abandoned, unkempt and decaying blemish upon the town’s principal trading thoroughfare the new owners reveal their own inherent superficiality, also a cynical disregard, not only for the efforts of these longer established local tradespeople, but for an entire community from whence they will soon be expecting to take money. Okehampton deserves better.

BH Varrall

Okehampton