History of St. Dominick – an occasional series: #4 Pre-history – 1485 Map 1: Part 3 Iron-Age

 

Welcome everyone to St Dominick blog. St Dominick is a village in the beautiful Tamar Valley in South East Cornwall. We are truly blessed to live somewhere which is surrounded with stunning vistas across a rural Cornish landscape. This a collective blog from our village including our community shop, local primary school, Cotehele our local National Trust heritage site, our parish newsletter, talented photographers, our locals, and ourselves- the local hostelry- the Whod Have Thought It Inn.

 To start the blog ball rolling I’ll add a few words about who we are here at the Whod and what we do. Our small family comprising our daughter and two four legged friends made the move from Kent to South East Cornwall in the Autumn of 2019 to be the current custodians of the local pub. We have spent the last year and a half getting acquainted with our wonderful community and the Cornish weather!

Clearly the curved ball we were not expecting was a global pandemic. It has brought with it both triumphs and challenges. On the challenging side have been  gearing up and down to open and close- the most difficult one being the day before New Years Eve which truly was a difficult pill to swallow, having waited and waited to stock up for New Years Eve until late in the day on the 30th December- only to be thwarted at the last moment.

 Positives have included the opportunity to truly reach out to our village community and both support and be supported by them. We have opened for takeaways and change this regularly to include requests from our locals such as Venison Pie. We are poised to launch a new menu this Friday- all made on site. Other ideas we have had included an Advent Window Trail around the village and we convinced one of our very obliging wonderful locals to dress up as Santa on Christmas Eve. Awesome sunsets, glorious sunrises and spectacular views over the river and the fact that we know we are now part of this thriving community have helped us to appreciate that whilst far from an ideal situation, we need to make the very best of it . 

Spring is in the air, daffodils and crocuses are in the hedgerows and we are excited to be foraging soon for wild garlic to make our own pesto. There have also been lighter moments during this difficult time- one of our favourites worth retelling was our daughter who helped once with our Friday night takeaway for extra pocket money announcing that she was to be furloughed forthwith because " you have furloughed everyone else..." Being resilient characters we look for silver linings no matter how paper thin they might be and refuse to believe the light at the end of the tunnel is actually an oncoming train.

So what is it like to live in a pub during a national shutdown? Colloquially it is often said that the best place to be in lockdown is a pub, and there is a certain logic to this... but a pub has no soul without customers, staff and all of our idiosyncrasies.  We are very much looking forward to seeing everyone and getting our doors open.  It would appear that we have a very aptly named pub- a global pandemic was never in our business plan… Whod Have Thought It Indeed!