A village pub that has been closed for almost four years is set to open again – after being bought by a resident determined not to see final orders called for good.

Yarnfield and Cold Meece Parish Council teamed up with villagers in a bid to secure The Labour in Vain for the community three years ago – and the pub was listed as an Asset of Community Value by Stafford Borough Council.

Now the venue has been bought by Yarnfield resident and parish cllr David Beeston, who was involved in the community campaign.

The sale went through last month (August) and is not connected with the parish council.

Mr Beeston informed fellow residents on social media that The Labour in Vain is now under new ownership.

Work is now taking place to refurbish the building ahead of its reopening and the aim is to secure a tenant to run the pub.

But the work suffered a set back last week after a break-in. Mr Beeston said: "We have beefed it up to stop people getting in and there is nothing in there of any value.

"Support in the village has been really good though.

"I have had people offering to help with cleaning and preparing it, and a lot of help from friends and villagers.

"There have been a lot of positive comments online.

"We will open it as soon as we possibly can, but we have a lot to do before we can.

"Our ambition is to find a tenant who is willing to see our vision of what we want and make sure it is run properly.

"The idea is to open around 9am to offer breakfast and coffee, and run through to the bar service in the afternoon and evening – we want to make it a café come bar but it will remain a pub.

"We have been using the pub for over 30 years as we live in the village.

"We didn't want to see it go down the route we thought it would go down.

"We're not publicans, but we didn't want to see the pub disappear out of the village.

"Hopefully we will get it back thriving and open to everybody."

In July 2023 Stafford Borough Council granted planning permission for three homes to be built on the pub's car park and the proposals sparked concerns that loss of the parking space could threaten the future of the venue, which is the village's only pub.

The planning consent for the car park development has now lapsed however.

In 2023 hundreds of people signed a petition to save the pub, which has been in the village for more than 170 years.

And parish cllrs said at the time they would be willing to work with a buyer planning to reopen it as a pub to make the venture as successful as possible.

Cllr Kirsty Treen said in 2023: "I moved the day before lockdown and one of the reasons we moved here was because there was a local pub, somewhere to go.

"When it reopened we went.

"I had my baby shower there and we have always tried to support it."