The finish line is so close now : so how do we cross it? After more than two years of forward planning, hard graft, essential fundraising and steadfast determination, we are finally getting to the business end of this inspiring project and the end goal is almost in sight. To call it a team effort would be underplaying the huge numbers of skilled workers, volunteers, suppliers and supporters who have got us to this point. We are all in this together and we're winning! Thank you to each and everyone of you. In a nutshell, this is our current position: We have raised the minimum amount of money needed to secure the building and get the lights on however we still need to raise funds to ensure the building is capable of serving as a viable platform for a thriving business. Please keep your investments coming in here - every penny is carefully allocated and much appreciated. Our final reopening plan is vitally dependent on volunteers. Volunteers to help us at every step of the way from rebuilding the pub to nurturing the garden to repainting the sign. If you are not yet on our volunteers list and would like to offer your time please contact us at 
volunteers@savethehoppole.org We are also ramping up our requests for donated items. We have a list of 'Materials needed' on our website, so if you can donate any of those items or know any supplier who would be willing to give us those items, please let us know at volunteers@savethehoppole.org . Thank you for any help you can offer! Fantastic response to our latest ITV news story We made the news again! On Sunday 3rd March the local ITV crew came to the Hop Pole to chat to the team about our drive for donations and volunteers. The feature aired that evening generating an instant, positive response with immediate pledges of goods and building materials. Huge thanks to Limpley Stoke's own Victoria Davies at ITV West Country for the ongoing interest and support for our campaign. You can see Simon & James talking through the project here . We think this new-found fame is suiting them! Building progress is steaming along Building progress continues at a pace with regular teams of experts and volunteers on site laying pipes, putting down boards, installing the electrics and so on. In a few weeks we'll continue with the garden planning, starting with the lawn being sown in April, which is encouraging news. To help you visualise the final pub as well as we can, we're excited to be able to share with you the final floor plan showing the newly positioned bar, the extensive seating areas, improved toilet block and plans for the outdoor terrace. You can see the floor plan by clicking here and scrolling through the browser version of our newsletter . Your ongoing help, funding and donations will make this plan a reality so please continue to dig deep as we head towards the finishing line! New video telling the story of our wonderful community We are incredibly fortunate to have so many willing and talented people in our community who have been able to bring their unique skills to the project. The latest of these is local filmmaker Alan Wright who has very generously taken his time to put together this wonderful film telling the story of our community and the background behind the Hop Pole campaign. In Alan's words: 'It is exactly two years since I became Director of Trowbridge Town Hall Trust with the daunting task of supervising a £10million capital project to restore the building's architectural legacy while, at the same time, transforming it into an environmentally friendly incubator for creative talent that will provide an exemplar throughout the south-west. When I moved to Freshford/Limpley Stoke last year, I was naturally fascinated by The Hop Pole project, especially as the ethos behind its revival was to provide a hub for the community and add to the villages' determination to bring about social cohesion. As a former television producer, I couldn't resist making a small contribution towards The Hope Pole appeal by creating a video which, I sincerely hope, will help convey the community message and wider story of this vital lifeline in the village.' You can see the video by clicking here . Please feel free to share it. Auction of Promises : auction items wanted! To help raise some extra funds we're planning to organise an Auction of Promises in the summer. Details of how this auction will run will be revealed nearer the time, but right now we are looking for donations, please! Anything is most welcome so please let us know if you have any items that we can add to the catalogue. Perfect examples might be: Holiday accommodation Tickets to an event/event ⁠A fun or unique experience ⁠Professional or business support Gardening or home interior design consultancy If you have anything you’d be prepared to donate or if you would like to join the very-newly-formed (and great fun) Auction of Promises team (which currently comprises Sally Gupta, Jane Trounce and Heather Coombe so far) please contact Heather Coombe at helloheth@hotmail.com . Thank you! Raise a glass at the Top Pole pop-up pub This month's Top Pole pop-up pub takes place on Friday 19th April, 6:30pm - 10pm at the Limpley Stoke Village Hall. As always, it promises to be a great night with food and drinks (cash and card) and live music. This month's menu is steak, kidney and mushroom pie or a veggie option (both £8) followed by chocolate cinnamon gateau (£3), so please email your choice to orlamorrish@gmail.com by 17th April if you'd like food. All profits are generously donated to the Hop Pole campaign and the events are always a lively, fun evening so we hope to see you there!

We are incredibly fortunate to have so many willing and talented people in our community who have been able to bring their unique skills to the project. The latest of these is local filmmaker Alan Wright who has very generously taken his time to put together this wonderful film telling the story of our community and the background behind the Hop Pole campaign. In Alan's words: 'It is exactly two years since I became Director of Trowbridge Town Hall Trust with the daunting task of supervising a £10million capital project to restore the building's architectural legacy while, at the same time, transforming it into an environmentally friendly incubator for creative talent that will provide an exemplar throughout the south-west. When I moved to Freshford/Limpley Stoke last year, I was naturally fascinated by The Hop Pole project, especially as the ethos behind its revival was to provide a hub for the community and add to the villages' determination to bring about social cohesion. As a former television producer, I couldn't resist making a small contribution towards The Hope Pole appeal by creating a video which, I sincerely hope, will help convey the community message and wider story of this vital lifeline in the village.' You can see the video by clicking here and please feel free to share it.

A huge thanks to Victoria Davies at ITV West Country news for covering our ongoing story this weekend. The feature focused on our call for vital donations of building materials and services that we desperately need to complete the project. We're thrilled to say that we've already had a great response to the feature, with viewers getting in touch to donate goods, which is enormously encouraging. If you can help us by donating, spreading the word or volunteering please get in touch at volunteers@savethehoppole.org . You can see Simon and James from the Save the Hop Pole team talking about the ongoing campaign on the ITV West Country news website by clicking here .

Latest share issue success : pub's future looks more rosy! We’re delighted to announce our second share issue rolled over the finishing line just ahead of the deadline. By the end of January, we had raised over £150,000 and, as a result, the Management Committee have declared the share issue live. Everyone who subscribed will receive their share certificate in the coming weeks so please keep your eye out for yours. A huge thank you again to everyone that invested in this important share issue. A special thank you to all those people in the USA, Australia, elsewhere overseas and across the UK, who may not be able to visit the Hop Pole, but who still got behind the campaign. This includes a matched funding pledge of £3k from a generous US investor. We're so grateful - you are making this happen! We are now as confident as we can be that the Hop Pole will reopen in 2024. Please go ahead and raise a glass to the future of the pub and look forward to some pop-up events in the pub over the spring and summer ahead of our autumn (fingers crossed) reopening. Now back to business! While this is all great news, we must stress that there is still a lot of hard work to do and our finances remain incredibly tight. It isn’t too late to invest and our share offer will remain open until 30th June with all funds being carefully allocated to the project, so please keep your generous funds coming in! In addition, we are looking for help in the following areas and would really appreciate some of you stepping up to offer your time, please: 1. Scrounging Team : volunteers needed Building material and labour costs have increased by up to 25% since this project was initiated, so the more materials we can get for nothing, or at a good discount, the better. With this in mind, we are setting up a Scrounging Team to phone various suppliers of building materials (electrical, plumbing, bathroom, kitchen etc) to ask them to donate items to complete the project. We will supply a list of items that we need and give guidance on what to say. It will be up to the Scrounging Team members to research who to contact, then phone them and work some magic! Any items donated would make a huge difference so if you’d like to join our resourceful Scrounging Team please email us at volunteers@savethehoppole.org . 2. Fundraising auction : auction lots needed We plan to hold an auction to raise some vital extra funds for the Hop Pole project. If you have any contacts for people or companies who might be able to donate items please let us know. We are open to suggestions - for example, contacts at Bath Rugby for a signed match ball or shirt, or Dyson for luxury goods would be very welcome! Does anyone have a holiday cottage they would be willing to donate for a weekend away, perhaps? Any other goods and services that may be sellable, and hopefully start a flurry of bidding activity, would be fantastic. If you have any items or contacts, please email volunteers@savethehoppole.org . 3. Spreading the word : leaflet drop volunteers needed We have received tremendous help from our supporters and champions in neighbouring villages, which is so important to the project. We’d now like to reach out to other communities who may not be aware of the project and might be happy to get involved. We are looking for people who would be willing to deliver leaflets to houses in places such as Bathampton, Coombe Down, Westwood and any other communities you could suggest. If you’d be happy to get involved in leaflet dropping in these areas, please email us at volunteers@savethehoppole.org . 4. Volunteers for labour : all hands on deck To keep our labour costs to a minimum, we will be undertaking as much work as we can using volunteers. For example, this week a team have been laying underfloor heating in the downstairs rooms of the pub. Some of you have already volunteered to help out with the floor laying, which probably won’t start until the end of March or early April so will we be rounding you up nearer the time. In the meantime, the next volunteer challenge will be to renovate the first floor tenant accommodation, which we expect to start on 15th/16th February with the remaining work on the flat being completed in March. This will be dusty and hard work, but we will supply all necessary PPE and crucially plenty of strong coffee and biscuits! A tough but rewarding task for all. If you’d like to volunteer your labour and skills, and you’re not already on our lists, please email us at tim.tuckey@me.com . Thank you to all of our incredible volunteers and supporters!

An enormous thank you to the 160+ of you who have, to date, supported our second share issue and with only two weeks to go we have very nearly reached the minimum £150,000 required to save the future of the pub. We are delighted to report that one of our US investors has agreed to buy up to £3,000 of shares on a matched funding basis. That means the next £3,000 of share applications we receive will be doubled and we will receive enough investment to carry us over the line. To take advantage of this generous offer all you have to do is to click here to apply for shares .
 Next challenges 
Although we are close to achieving our minimum, we are still a long way away from our £300,000 share offer target. We are planning to help fill this gap over the coming months by: Saving labour costs - by using our volunteers to carry out work Saving material costs - by using a 'Scrounging team' to source free/cheap materials (see below) Continuing to raise funds – by selling shares and starting other fund raising initiatives. Please note we now accept PayPal payments which you can make by clicking here Join our 'Scrounging team'! 
With materials comprising around 50% of costs, we need to source free or cheap materials from suppliers if we’re going to complete this project within our very tight budget. With that in mind, we are in the process of drawing up a list of materials that we need and are looking for volunteers to help us scrounge bargains! It’s a fun, creative and rewarding role and you’d be surprised at the number of suppliers who are already supporting our local, community-run pub project, so we are hoping for an encouraging response from people on the list.
 
If you’d like to find out more about what’s involved please contact our Head of Volunteers, Julian Davies at volunteers@savethehoppole.org Making good building progress A quick update from the team to say that the building works are progressing well. The phase 3 planning public consultation period ends on Friday 26th January with the determination date set for 8th February. This is for the extensions at the rear, the new kitchen and the loo block. We will keep you updated with planning progress. Time for a quizzing tipple at the Top Pole The next Top Pole pop-up pub is on Friday 26th January, 6:30 - 10:00pm at the Limpley Stoke Village Hall. This month, they are hosting a trivia quiz so put your thinking caps on. The quiz sheet is £2 and can be bought by a team or an individual. The winner(s) will receive a well deserved prize! To fuel your brain, they are also offering a charcuterie board and a cheese board, both served with bread, followed by treacle tart with custard or cream. The mains are £8, the pudding is £2.50, so please email orlamorrish@gmail.com to order your choice of food. Hope to see lots of you on there on the 26th!

Our brilliant resident band, The Limpley Strokes, have made some time in their busy gigging schedule to write a song just for us! Based on 'At the Hop' by Danny & The Juniors, the band have written and recorded their very own version (can you see where this is going?) called 'At the Hop (Pole)'! You can see it on YouTube here . It's a lot of fun and it's all about raising awareness around our campaign, so if you're jigging around to this in your kitchen please make even a small donation here via our PayPal account . Thank you!

Fundraising momentum : £30,000 to go! On 18th October 2023, we launched a second £300,000 share issue with a minimum of £150,000 needed by the end of January 2024 for the project to go ahead. If this share issue is a success, we are confident that, come hell or high water, we’ll reopen the Hop Pole. If this share issue fails, this project will have to be abandoned. The good news is £120,000 has already been subscribed so we only need another £30,000 (minimum). So please, please dig deep, seek out any spare change down the back of your sofas and subscribe to a few more shares, so we can reach this target and fulfil our dream of reopening the Hop Pole as a community hub and pub. To subscribe for shares, just complete the share application form on our website and transfer your funds. Before investing we recommend you read our share offer prospectus and associated business plan , both of which are available on our website. We answer some FAQs below and if you have any further questions please do not hesitate to email us at limpleystokecbs@gmail.com or call Simon Coombe on 07966 027637. FAQs Q: When will the Hop Pole be reopened? A: If we raise sufficient funds, we hope to reopen the Hop Pole in Autumn 2024. Q: How much have you raised so far? A: We have raised a total of £1,020,000 so £30,000 represents the last 3% of the funds required to reopen the Hop Pole. Q: Where has all this money come from? A: 600 people invested £570,000 in our first share issue, a further £330,000 has been raised from grants and over 100 people have subscribed £120,000 in our second share issue. Q: What happens if you don’t raise the final £30,000 by the end of January 2024? A: If we don’t raise the £150,000 minimum for the second share issue by the deadline, the issue will be deemed to have failed and all these subscribers will be refunded in full. We're then likely to have to sell the building to the highest bidder and, after repaying all grants and overage obligations, the existing shareholders will receive the balance which will be a fraction of their original investment. Please note the management committee have the right to extend the end-January 2024 deadline by up to four weeks. Q: What happens if you raise £150,000 but are short of your £300,000 target? A: Under this scenario we will be forced to use our limited funds as sparingly as possible. This will increase our dependence upon volunteer labour and donated materials and result in the building having a less high quality finish and a delayed reopening date. Q: How easy is it to top up my existing shareholdings? A: Very easy. If you have already subscribed the minimum £200 to this issue and want to add to that, please feel free to do so as any additional funds you can offer will be much appreciated. Just complete the share application form on our website here and email us to let us know this is a top-up investment. Q: If I don’t have any spare funds, what else can I do to help? A: If you have any spare time or relevant expertise please join our merry group of volunteers by emailing us at volunteerslscbs@gmail.com . You can also help by spreading the word to friends and neighbours - the more people who get Inn-volved, the better the Hop Pole will be! Your views are essential : planning application support needed The latest application for the repair, enhancement and reuse of our Hop Pole Inn has been logged with Wiltshire Planners. As always, the application planning process invites comments to be submitted from both statutory parties and those with an interest. Please note that of all the applications logged so far this one crucially needs community input to highlight the importance of the new rear elements in achieving an accessible, vibrant and viable business. All comments are welcome however only those comments that address relevant planning policy matters carry any real weight in the officer’s assessment. With this in mind, we wish to invite you to add comments of support at the link below please, before 26th January, on the following themes (please don’t copy and paste but rewrite along the lines of these ideas): Redevelopment of rear of the building : this will create a larger, more efficient and cost-effective space in which the pub can thrive as a business. Without this additional development, the long term sustainability of the business is put under pressure. Accessibility : level access throughout will allow ease of access into the pub, its facilities and garden. Planned changes range from widened doorways though to new WCs, as well as level access and new rear elements that make the garden a space for all. Welcome : A more inviting, accessible and welcoming front of house letting all visitors and passers-by know that the pub and community hub is open for business and encouraging all ages to be part of the community. Proposals for the garden and the garden room : the garden has always been a key benefit for the Hop Pole, bringing in warm weather diners and drinkers. Our plans will allow visitors the opportunity to dine and drink outside all year round - a welcome addition for visitors and also a vital asset for the business. If you would like to add a comment we would be hugely grateful so please click here and select the 'Comments' tab . Thank you. New committee member : Welcome Julian! We're delighted to welcome Julian Davies to the Save the Hop Pole committee, specifically looking after our brilliant band of volunteers! Many of you will know Julian as a long term resident and also as the electrician keeping the community aglow. Julian will be working closely with the building team and looking for tasks that we can put to our volunteers, so please keep your eyes peeled for Julian's calls to arms when we need you. Thank you again to all of our volunteers. This project would not be where it is without your valuable help!

Our campaign makes TV headlines Our plight made the ITV news! Many thanks to the team at ITV, particularly to Limpley Stoke resident and ITV reporter Victoria Davies, for covering our campaign. Every bit of exposure is vital for the project so this was another sprinkling of gold dust for us. You can see the report here and please remember that if this message hits home to you, invest in the project to save our pub as soon as you can. Thank you! We've hit another fundraising milestone - we're getting there! As you know, following the AGM we released a second share issue and stressed the urgent need for more financial support to complete the project. We're delighted to say that we have now exceeded the £100k mark, which is hugely encouraging although there’s still a long way to go to reach our £300k target, so please keep your funds coming in. Important reminder: please note that all money invested in this second share offer will be secure and ring-fenced until we reach our minimum hurdle of £150k (by the end of January 2024) at which point the share issue will go live and all investors will receive their share certificates. If this minimum is not achieved, the share issue will be deemed a failure, all monies will be returned and the project abandoned. To buy shares or to find out more information please click here. Special offer : a bottle of delicious olive oil to help our campaign With the kind generosity of Limpley Stoke residents Julian & Rebecca Davies, we have a very special offer for you. Julian recently bought a property near Arrone, in Umbria Italy, with its own olive grove, and Julian has donated to us 20 500ml bottles of his extra virgin olive oil to sell at £20 per bottle towards our campaign. When making this batch of oil, they decided to go for an early harvest when the olives are less ripe, which means the yield is lower but the quality is higher. The olives were harvested by hand and then taken to a local olive press or 'frantoio', where they were washed and cold pressed. Unlike the oil you will buy in supermarkets it is completely unprocessed, therefore it is cloudy and may include a little bit of sediment. There is only one word for it...BUONO! We're offering these to you on a first come first served basis. Buyers will need to collect from Limpley Stoke please, as the bottles are glass and not suitable for posting. We're sure these will be snapped up so please email lucy.poloniecka@gmail.com to secure your bottle and make payment. Grazie! Share the community love with this thoughtful idea Some of our investors are very kindly buying shares as Christmas gifts, which we think is a fabulous idea (of course), so to make investing and gifting as easy as possible for you, we've created a gift certificate that you can print out and hand to your lucky recipient on the Big Day. To apply for shares please click here and to request a gift certificate please email sallyhumpston@gmail.com . Sing along with The Limpley Strokes! Our brilliant resident band, The Limpley Strokes, have made some time in their busy gigging schedule to write a song just for us! Based on 'At the Hop' by Danny & The Juniors, the band have written and recorded their very own version (can you see where this is going?) called 'At the Hop (Pole)'! You can see it on YouTube here . It's a lot of fun and it's all about raising awareness around our campaign, so if you're jigging around to this in your kitchen please make even a small donation here via our PayPal account . Thank you! Celebrate Christmas with a tipple at the Top Pole! While our beloved pub continues its restoration and TLC, the Top Pole in Middle Stoke is carrying the mantle as village watering hole brilliantly! Toast your friends, neighbours and new faces at the next Top Pole gathering on Friday 15th December, 6:30pm - 10pm at the Village Hall in Middle Stoke. For any questions, please contact orlamorrish@gmail.com. Cheers! Thank you and please stay in touch As we reach the end of the year, we want to say thank you to everyone of you who has bought shares, worked tirelessly behind the scenes, donated time or materials and has spread the word to help our campaign. We have got this far on the back of the strong, special community spirit that will see this pub reopen, so let's keep pushing forward and complete the final stages in early 2024! Follow all our news on socials (Instagram @the_hop_pole_inn & Twitter @thehoppoleLS ) or please email us at limpleystokecbs@gmail.com if you have any other queries. Thank you again for your support and Merry Christmas!

Many thanks to ITV news and local reporter Victoria Davies for covering our ongoing campaign on our regional ITV news! The feature includes interviews with the committee members, alongside photos of the pub over the years and lots of shots of our fantastic volunteers hard at work. Please click here to see the report and watch this space for more updates.