About The Lion
SAVED BY THE COMMUNITY
The Lion is a community-owned pub – saved by local people who weren’t prepared to see the village lose its last remaining pub.
When the doors closed in 2023, the community came together with one goal: to buy The Lion, bring it back to life and secure its future for generations to come. Local residents formed Ickleton Community Pub Limited and launched an ambitious campaign to bring the pub into community ownership.
The response was extraordinary. People from Ickleton and beyond bought community shares, supported fundraising events and rolled up their sleeves to help bring the building back to life.
Hundreds of investors, thousands of volunteer hours and a remarkable village effort later, The Lion proudly reopened in 2025.
Today, it’s once again a place to meet, eat, drink and gather – a pub that really does belong to its community.
A PUB WITH A STORY TO TELL
The pub was first recorded as the Lion in 1728, as The Red Lion from 1800 onwards and re-named again as The Ickleton Lion in the 1980s.
To mark its return to a freehouse in 2025, the pub was renamed ‘The Lion at Ickleton.’
During WWII, U.S. airmen were frequent visitors, remembered fondly (and mischievously) by local children who would promise not to tinker with the bikes in return for lemonade or a packet of crisps.
RAF legend Douglas Bader himself is even said to have drunk there during his posting to nearby Duxford in 1940.
The pub also has a connection to Spurs; John Ripsher (1840–1907), the first President of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, had strong roots in Ickleton. His grandfather Swann Ripsher was a farmer in the village and John was the half-nephew of William andRebecca Ripsher, both Ickletonians and former publicans of The Lion.
3,000+
Volunteer hours
120+
Volunteers
£441,000
Raised through community shares
417
Community investors
Campaign underway June 2024
The Lion’s Garden in July 2024
Key Handover December 2024
WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS
Saving and restoring The Lion was a huge community effort, made possible not only by our shareholders and volunteers but by the generous support of grant funders, local businesses and organisations who believed in the project. We’re enormously grateful to everyone who helped us bring The Lion back to life. We celebrate everyone who helped us on our ‘Lion Heroes’ page.
We have been lucky to have been awarded some wonderful grants to help with the cost of both purchasing and refit of The Lion.
Net Zero Villages is a grant provided by the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority, with supplementary funds contributed by South Cambridgeshire District Council. Grant awards support the decarbonisation of community assets in rural villages.
Thalia WB Community Fund awards grants to support community, environmental and heritage projects run by non-profit organisations based in Cambridgeshire, within 10 miles of a landfill site. The fund is managed by Cambridgeshire Community Foundation and is part of a voluntary environmental tax credit scheme called the Landfill Communities Fund.
South Cambridgeshire District Council also awarded a Community Chest grant under the biodiversity section to help bring the pub garden back to life.
We are grateful to Plunkett UK for their invaluable support, made possible through funding from the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority (CPCA). With CPCA’s backing, we received both a feasibility grant and a capital grant, which were vital in helping us secure The Lion for the community.
Our community cafe would not have been possible without the advice and support of Pub is The Hub, the rural and community pubs organisation.
A Community Garden Grant from the National Garden Scheme will enable us to create a small children’s play garden.
