Heart of the Village

Heart of the Village (HOTV) is the name of our community enterprise, which now owns the Royal Oak. This building has housed the community shop since the end of November (2020) and a new coffee shop. The pub reopened in April 2021 as soon as Covid restrictions allowed.

This website is in the process of change. As with HOTV itself, the centre of gravity will shift from campaigning and fundraising to information on the new businesses and plans for the future.

To learn more please follow the links on the right (or below on smaller screens).

The Royal Oak on VJ Day 1945. Photo courtesy of Pete Nicholas, via Dave Evans

HOTV became a registered Community Benefit Society in March 2019. A share offer ran from August the same year and raised over £200,000. This money was supplemented with grants and loans, enabling us to buy the Royal Oak a year later. 

Contacts
HOTV is a community organisation, and we aim to serve the needs and reflect the tastes of all those who live in Stoke St Gregory, not just shareholders or “Members”. Please share your comments and suggestions with us via contact@hotvssg.org or phone Graham Gleed on 01823 490407.

We hold open meetings which anyone is welcome to attend. Agendas will be published on the Documents page.

To contact the shop, email shop@hotvssg.org or phone 07842 992825
To contact the secretary: secretary@hotvssg.org. To contact the treasurer: accounts@hotvssg.org. Details of all members of the Management Committee can be seen here.

About the logo
The overall shape represents the parish of Stoke St Gregory. The number of dots equates roughly to the number of people who live here, and the coalescence around hotv at the centre is intended to illustrate what we are trying to do: to bring the village together around a common meeting point—or heart. If you like, you can also read it as a swarm of bees, working together in the common cause to produce sweetness. This theme is echoed in the hexagonal (honeycomb) shape of the sign for the shop.