THE TEAM running a popular Salisbury pub has celebrated a milestone this week. 

It is now five years since it was taken over by the brother and sister team of Jonty and Amanda Newbery, along with bar manager Paul Cooper.

The pub celebrated the anniversary on Saturday, February 24, donating 10 per cent of all sales to Salisbury Hospice, raising around £100 for the charity.

It is not the first time the pub has ran campaigns to contribute toward charity, with previous efforts going to support the Cat Protection League, staying true both to Jonty’s belief in giving back to the community and his lifelong love of cats.

Salisbury Journal: Jonty Newbery can be found daily at The Duke of York as the face of the pub.

The Newberys took over operation of The Duke in 2019.

Jonty was self-managing his pension at the time and saw The Duke as a good investment.

Jonty said: “I came to look at it and I fell in love with it the minute I walked in the door. I thought, what a wonderful little pub.

“I thought it was a good little opportunity. It wasn’t very expensive, so I bought it.”

Unfortunately, the unexpected Covid lockdown came shortly thereafter, but Jonty and Amanda used the downtime to renovate the garden.

Jonty, 59, is the public face of The Duke, while his cat Pansey, who will be celebrating his third birthday on Wednesday, April 10, could be said to serve as the pub’s mascot, though Jonty refers to him as “the guy in charge” and “the main man”.

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Larry Dodd, 65, who has known Jonty for 26 years, said Jonty is a large part of the pub.

Larry said: “Before, it was hardly turning over anything. But when Jonty came in, his whole persona, people like him. It’s an old cliché- a landlord makes a pub.”

A community revolves around the pub, which inconspicuously sits among the houses on York Road, away from the tourist areas of Salisbury.

Jonty said: “Basically, a pub is very, very simple. People go to work and they get stressed at work and they want to come out for a relaxing drink.”

True to having its own community, the pub also has its own magazine, featuring the types of stories one might hear when meeting an interesting person in the pub, jokes, articles about the history of Salisbury and the pub, and fictional stories that Jonty writes about Pansey’s adventures.

Jonty believes one of the keys to success is money not being the sole goal of any enterprise, it simply being the reward for doing something well that you enjoy and believe in.

He said: “You can’t do anything on a commercial basis. You do everything as best as you possibly can and then the money comes naturally. That’s how it works.”