Greene King reprieves three Cambridge pubs
Greene King has changed its mind about selling three pubs in the same small area of Cambridge after the pubs received strong support from their customers.
All three pubs — the Zebra, the Corner House and the Bird in Hand — are located on Cambridge's Newmarket Road. A fourth pub, the Penny Ferry, will remain up for sale. Corinne Brown, landlady of the Zebra, started an online petition to save her pub.
She told a local newspaper: "I have just found out we will not be closing and neither will the other two pubs near us. I will be taking that 'for sale' sign down and ceremoniously smashing it up. "I am really pleased we are staying open but I have a lot of work to do.
That 'for sale' sign has killed our business and we need almost to start again. "We received a tremendous amount of support and got more than 400 people on the Facebook page to save the pub and had 41 comments. I will probably give the pub a facelift, but for now we are just relieved that we are still open for business.
"Our area manager also helped to persuade Greene King to keep us open. Now we want to make this one of the best pubs in Cambridge."
Paul Ainsworth, pubs officer for Cambridge and District Camra, said: "It is the sheer concentration — three pubs in a really small area. It does seem like a cull. You would be left with the Burleigh Arms, the Seven Stars and the Wrestlers in an area where there were once 10 pubs."
