Barrow’s Conservative Club is revelling in its recent, and totally unexpected, award from CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) for the Best Club in the Loughborough and North Leicestershire area.

This is a fairly new category of awards and one which may well continue. The Cons Club was inspected for all aspects of its services including its range of ales; how the ales are served and kept; the atmosphere; customer service; cleanliness and friendliness. Officers were informed a week before the awards ceremony that they had been nominated so a contingent turned up to receive the award at the Polish Club in Loughborough in March. They duly received the certificate which is now proudly displayed on the bar.

Barrow’s Conservative Club was founded in 1902. Recently it has gone from strength to strength and now has over 1,000 members who love the place! Nathan Prosser and Danielle Armiger have been the stewards for the last seven years and Darran Wright is the chairman. The Cons Club is unusual in the number of real ales which it sells and also the degree to which it plays an important social role in the community. Every Wednesday it offers free soup to OAPs, particularly between November and the end of March. It provides an extremely popular Sunday lunch at affordable prices and during the Covid pandemic, it played a vital role in the village food bank.

So well done, Cons Club and all who work so hard to make it a successful part of Barrow!

Judith Rodgers