Elm Tree pub goes from flooded to serving pints again in record time

During that time, it has flooded multiple times as heavy rains fell on the quiet New Forest town, with the most recent incident occurring when Storm Ciarán hit on Wednesday, November 1, less than one year after landlord Paul Risbridger, 59, took on the 16th-century building as his first pub.

Paul stayed up in the pub all night to monitor the situation. There was little he could do to prevent the rising water, but he was able to mitigate the damage in real time.

Paul said: “At the end of the day, because we managed to move a lot of the stuff, we didn’t have the major damage that we could have had. Because I was here during the night, we were able to sort of react to it which made a huge difference and enabled us to get up and running much faster.”

Landlord Paul Risbridger with his wife Deborah and their dog Billy. (Image: Deborah Risbridger)

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When the time came on the morning of Thursday, November 2 to pump the water out and clean up, Paul received an overwhelming community response, with 20 to 25 people asking to help, customers willing to dismiss the noise of water pumps and staff exceeding their job duties.

One of the first people to arrive and offer help was building contractor Martin Smith, who rolled up in his vehicle at 7.30am and offered Paul the use of two pumps to remove the water from the pub.

Other local business owners also had equipment that Paul was able to gracefully make use of, while he told others the best way they could help would be to come by the pub for their pint as usual once the doors were back open.

Paul said the staff didn’t hesitate to do what was needed to get the pub back up and running, despite flood recovery not being in their job descriptions.

Paul said: “The staff were great because they just turned up and said 'What do we do?'. Normally, they’d be waiting tables and serving behind the bar and they were pushing Vax machines around and sorting pumps out and just generally mucking into doing whatever was needed, it was great.”

Much to Paul’s surprise, the Elm Tree was serving pints later that same day, before all of the water was even out of the building, spearheaded by two of the pub’s longstanding patrons asking if they could still have their pint as they have for many years.

Despite parts of the building still being ankle-deep in water, the bar area was clear and the staff happily served them. More punters continued to arrive, undeterred by the floodwaters.

Paul said: “It was quite bizarre that we thought we’d be closed for a few days and then by lunchtime that day it was kind of obvious people wanted to come in anyway. They were sitting there having a pint while all the pumps were going. We were still pumping the water out and they were coming in and having a drink. Which is fine; it was nice because you’ve just got that sort of spirit.”