THE WILLIAM Cobbett Society has expressed “real concern” after reading of the threat to Farnham’s popular William Cobbett pub in last week’s Herald.

The Rolfe family, which has run the much-loved town pub for more than three decades, is currently locked in a rent dispute with the Cobbett’s owners Tavern Propco.

This centres around the Jersey-registered firm’s refusal to offer its 370 pubs across the country a rent holiday for the duration of the Covid-enforced closure.

Cobbett Society treasurer Stewart Edge said: “The pub does not just bear William Cobbett’s name, but was also the house in which he was brought up.

“As such its retention, as a place the public can access, is of real value to Farnham, quite apart from its success over the years as a well-used pub.

“What would William Cobbett think? He spent his life campaigning for those whose life had been disrupted by the changes of his times – brought on by the enclosures and then by the start of the Industrial Revolution, and in the years of ‘rotten boroughs’ when most people did not have the vote, there was much to complain about.

“But in all of this, Cobbett reserved real venom for absentee landlords – men of wealth seeking to make money out of money, without regard for local people.

“He would have been horrified by the very concept of his family home being in a ‘portfolio of 370 pubs owned by a global investment and management company.’

“That these pubs had been ‘sold off’ by the previous owners (Ei Group) only last year would have reinforced his horror.

“We really do hope Mrs May, the licensee and leaseholder, can get satisfactory terms agreed with these owners in the unprecedented Covid circumstances.

“The owners apparently say they ‘want to help pubs survive the crisis’. We wait with concern for them to give sufficient help to match this claim.”