How a tech billionaire couple saved a Devon village, starting with its boozer

Telegraph

2 days ago

Two clock-off-early tradesmen nurse pints of Guinness at the bar while a miniature dachshund vents its small-dog fury at a larger mutt sat under a nearby table. 'Quiet, Pebbles,' its lager-sipping owner implores. ' Shhhhh.'
It's a scene that could be playing out at any pub in the land on this Friday afternoon, but The Farmers Arms is not just any pub; it's Visit England's Pub of the Year – some accolade for the middle-of-nowhere North Devon village that it calls home.
But Woolfardisworthy – or Woolsery, for short – is not your average village.
While others of its ilk have faded in that familiar way, drained of brawn and brain by a lack of rural opportunities, Woolsery (population: 1,100) has avoided a similar fate thanks to a Silicon Valley tech bro.
In an unlikely turn of events, Michael Birch and his wife Xochi, the multimillionaire founders of the social networking site Bebo, used some of their considerable fortune to buy up failing local businesses – including the then-closed Farmers Arms and village shop – to prevent Woolsery from folding in on itself.
That might sound like an odd pet project for two San Francisco-dwelling tech entrepreneurs, but Birch was guided by a sense of duty, matters of the heart.
His great-grandparents built the shop, his grandmother was born above it, and he spent many merry summers knocking around Woolsery as a kid before hitting the big time during the dotcom boom.
'It's a Netflix story,' coos Steve Manzanero, who's drinking in the pub with his wife Sarah Roots.
They know a thing about reality shows, having moved to Woolsery from Basingstoke after taking part in BBC's Escape to the Country. The Farmers Arms helped seal the deal.
'We fell in love with the place,' says Mazanero, who is launching 'carbon-neutral' holiday accommodation in the village.
'I haven't seen Michael yet, but I'd love to have a pint with him.'
'Woolsery is a bit special,' adds Roots, a teaching assistant who won't be the first person to tell me as much. 'It's the best village I've lived in,' adds Tracey Renton, another regular, originally from Darlington, but who's lived all over. 'It's just magical.'
Woolsery certainly has an air of exclusivity about it. In contrast to its rugged rural surrounds, the village looks neat and manicured.
The shop is upmarket, there's a gourmet chippy and a boutique hotel scattered across several smartly renovated buildings. It's a model village.
The Farmers Arms itself is a far cry from the spit-and-sawdust rural boozers of old, with its craft cocktails and à la carte food, served in the high-beamed restaurant out back.
All these businesses, plus an under-construction hotel and restaurant in the Georgian manor opposite, are part of The Collective, a hospitality group set up by the Birches to breathe new life into Woolsery. It employs 62 people, most of them from the village.
'You've got to take your hat off to them, they've done something pretty special,' says Simon Odell, one of the Guinness-sipping tradesmen at the bar. Odell lives in the neighbouring village, Buckland Brewer, which, he says, offers a stark contrast to booming Woolsery.
'When I moved there, there was a pub, a butcher, a village shop, a Post Office,' he recalls. 'Now the pub's applying for a change of usage – all we'll have left is the shop. Not everywhere can have a tech millionaire to invest in it.'
Odell, who runs Odell Building and Restorations, says he feels welcome at The Farmers Arms in mortar-splashed overalls, despite the pub's polished appearance and its £75-a-head five-course tasting menu (regular pub dishes, albeit with a gourmet touch, are available).
His colleague, James Pearce, agrees. He grew up in one-pub Woolsery and remembers what The Farmers Arms was like before.
'It wasn't very welcoming,' he says. 'The landlord was grumpy and some locals liked to scrap. It went downhill. Then the roof collapsed and suddenly there was no pub.'
Inevitably, there are those who hark back to the days when rural pubs like The Farmers Arms were innocent of modern trends. In a darkened nook, one local scoffs at 'the millionaire done good who came to buy the village'.
It raises an obvious question: what do we want tech bros to do with their wonga? Fly the missus to space, colonise Mars or save one of Britain's many closed pubs?
Others wish the beer was better – and cheaper. 'They've done a great job with the renovation – you can't fault that – and the staff are great, but they need to up their beer game,' says farmer, Zen Butler. '£6 for an ale – it's priced some out.'
The Farmers Arms – a pub named after folk like Butler – is not, he suggests, what you might call a drinker's pub. He's right, of course – it's much more than that.
A short walk uphill from the inn, along winding lanes lined with hedges, is 150-acre Birch Farm, which is also part of The Collective, and supplies much of the food served at the pub.
Like Woolsery, Birch Farm goes against the grain. Literally so – you'll find no fields of wheat here. In contrast to the green parcels of land smothering the surrounding hills like a patchwork quilt, Birch Farm is a colourful mosaic of wildflower meadows, fledgling trees and vegetable gardens.
A cacophony of birdsong greets me, courtesy of skylarks, blackbirds, bull finches, swallows. 'It was silent when we got here,' says Josh Sparkes, who manages the farm. 'But they came back.'
Sparkes are his team are transforming the former arable and cattle farm into a 'climate-resistant perennial food system' that feeds nature as well as people.
Among the wildflowers are chestnut trees, apple trees, hazelnuts and edible perennials such as sea kale and mashua, a potato-like tuber native to South America. Rare-breed pigs and sheep, which will be served at the pub, roam nearby.
'The input is zero; no fertilisers, no pesticides,' says Sparkes. 'We brought beetles back to eat the slugs. It's about working with nature.'
Sparkes doesn't consider what he's doing rewilding. 'Rewilding pushes people out,' he says. 'We just want people to have good access to food that protects biodiversity.
Traditional farming has got maybe 40 years left [before the soil is depleted]. We want to prove to other farmers that this can be profitable.'
Back in Woolsery, chef Toby Neal is certainly grateful for the ingredients coming down from the farm. 'Not many chefs get to have the things that I get,' he says, as the orders fly in. 'It's unique.'
The tasting menu is certainly like nothing I've eaten before. Each dish is garnished with edible flowers and leaves that pop with unfamiliar but welcome flavours.
The whiteface Dartmoor hogget with morel and asparagus is sensational. And this, in tiny, middle-of-nowhere Woolsery.
For waitress Sophie Buckley, who grew up here, the pub's unlikely revival has stopped her from being part of the rural brain drain.