Wigan pub wins brewery's community award

Carol Ball and husband Graham at The Plough and Harrow, Shevington. The pub has won a regional prize in the Thwaites Community Hero award and is into the national final next month.Carol Ball and husband Graham at The Plough and Harrow, Shevington. The pub has won a regional prize in the Thwaites Community Hero award and is into the national final next month.
Carol Ball and husband Graham at The Plough and Harrow, Shevington. The pub has won a regional prize in the Thwaites Community Hero award and is into the national final next month.
A pub is being hailed as the heart of the community in a prize-giving run by the major brewery which owns it.

The Plough and Harrow, in Shevington, was declared an area winner in the Community Hero category of the Thwaites Hospitality Awards.

The accolade delighted manager Carol Kirk, who runs the place with her husband Graham Ball working there too.

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The Broad o’th’ Lane venue will now compete against other regional winners in the brewery’s Hospitality Awards Evening at a hotel and spa in the Lake District in mid-November.

Carol says it is important to her that the Plough and Harrow is a hub of Shevington life, with a number of local groups meeting there regularly and the watering hole also acting as a base for generous residents’ efforts to raise thousands of pounds for charity each year.

She said she was thrilled to be told that Thwaites’ area manager had suggested the Plough and Harrow should be the recipient of one of the company’s awards and spoke of what it would mean to potentially bring national silverware back to Wigan.

Carol said: “It was a shock to receive the award, we weren’t expecting it. We got a call out of the blue explaining we had been picked. I was quite gobsmacked.

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“It’s amazing and we’re really pleased. It shows what using the pub as a base for the village can do.

“It’s an honour and we’re really proud of our community and regulars for getting us to this point.

“It would be amazing to win a national award, great for Shevington and for Wigan.

“It’s about making the pub of the heart of the community, where people meet and get together.”

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The Plough and Harrow is where Shevington FC and Shevington Sharks rugby league clubs meet after matches, where allotment and gardening groups meet and the base for an annual Shevington To Southport bike ride which in 25 years has raised more than £140,000 for charity.

It also regularly hosts fund-raising events for other good causes, has darts and dominoes teams which hold an annual charity night and organises theatre trips.

The pub will find out if it has won a national award on November 17.

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