An award-winning Ayrshire pub has been hit by a fire – only to re-open within 24 hours thanks to the effort of the local community.
The Weston Tavern in Kilmaurs suffered damage yesterday morning but locals and regulars rallied around to help clean up the damage and worked all day to help get the place back into working order.
The boozer, which has been voted Scotland’s Best Pub in the Scottish Entertainment Awards for two years running, is owned by John Cairns.
A social media post yesterday morning confirmed the incident, saying: “We have had a fire, which has now been extinguished by the fire services.
“This morning John was woken up by the fire alarm going off him and dos managed to get out safe.
“There’s a big clean up job needed, the fire was contained in the tavern area. Our restaurant luckily wasn’t affected, we will have to remain closed until everything is tidied up.”
That’s when the community stepped up.
Around two dozen volunteers flocked to the Weston and offered to help in any way they could including painting, donating a TV and donating towards the cost of the new materials.
An emotional John took to the Weston’s Facebook page to say: “A massive thank you to our local community who have really rallied behind us today.
“All day and night there has been a team of 20+ volunteers helping us clean the tavern from ceiling to floor from the aftermath of the fire this morning.
“We have had to do joinery and electrical work, lots of deep cleaning and painting.
“There is still another coat of paint to do, optics to put up which have just arrived and glasses to put away.
“We really appreciate everyone that’s helped, sent us messages of support and gifted us a new tv and money towards the repair costs I never thought the turnaround from this morning’s disaster was possible in this time frame but it has been all because of our community.
“Thank you, John x”
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