Pub with collapsed wall lets staff go amid rebuild

Staff from the pub said the collapse was "horrendous"

The landlady of a Devon pub says she has had to let all of her staff go, after a building collapse that could take more than a year to rebuild.

A large section of the cobb wall at The Ship Inn, in Cockwood, near Dawlish, was undermined by flooding last month.

The walls of the pub are made from cob, a traditional West Country building material, which is a mixture of mud and straw.

Landlady Heather Brown said the decision had been forced on her, as the pub had no income, and had yet to receive help from insurers.

'No end in sight'

She said: "We have no end in sight, they are conservatively estimating that it could be 12 months before the building is restored to the state that it was before.

"There was no way we could keep staff on indefinitely, because we couldn't afford to pay them."

Ms Brown said it was a "heart-breaking" decision to make.