A group of village locals in the south of England are giving new meaning to the word “slay.”
On Jan. 20, Friends of The Elm Tree posted a video on TikTok detailing their efforts to save the Elm Tree Inn, a pub located in the village of Langton Herring in Dorset, England. They have until March 3 to raise 200,000 pounds to get the pub reopened as a not-for-profit community asset.
In the video, a group of villagers — many in their golden years — appeal to viewers in a rather distinctive manner.
“We’ve been feeling salty about our village pub closing down,” Tim Warren, 68, says at the start of the video before his wife Hilary Warren chimes in with: “We were shook when we found out it might be knocked down along with its rich, 400-year history.”
“Our village pub is the GOAT, and here is why,” Tim continues.
“Spill the tea,” Hilary demands.
Our narrators, bedecked in knitted jumpers, cozy hats and wellies, detail the history of the centuries-old pub and its involvement in several pieces of British history. These include a “sus” ring of Russian spies during the Cold War, and some “baddies” who invented the totally “slay” bouncing bomb during World War II.
The Gen-Z slang is strong in the clip, and every villager seems to know exactly how to wield it. They encourage viewers seeking “somewhere to crochet with the besties” or a place to meet their “next situationship” to look no further than the Elm Tree Inn.
“Be an Elm Tree stan and help these boomers save their pub,” Hilary says, before another woman named Judy closes it out.
“Where else would we be able to get lit on a Friday night?” she asks.
The clip — whose caption reads, “pov your gen z daughter writes the campaign script to save your village pub” — has amassed 1.6 million views and thousands of cheerful comments on TikTok.
“This is the greatest script ever written,” one TikTok user commented.
“Do I live anywhere near Dorset? No,” one user wrote. “will [I] unequivocally support the Friends of The Elm Tree? Yes.”
“They’ve all got such great knitwear!” said another user, to whom Friends of the Elm Tree replied, “All made in the Elm Tree — no cap!”
The brains behind the campaign is singer Sarah de Warren, who also happens to be the daughter of two of the viral video’s most “slay” stars.
“Honestly, they’re such good sports because we just showed up with a script and said, ‘Can you say this line?’ and they were like, ‘Yeah, OK!’” de Warren tells TODAY.com. “I did have to do some explaining of what things meant, like, ‘situationship’ was not a familiar term.”
But it’s not only the “boomers” sharing in a bit of cultural exchange between the age brackets.
“We’ve got so many comments from people in America who want to join the crochet club because I’m on there with my friends,” Hilary tells TODAY.com. “We intend to meet at the pub when it opens again, so now we’re going to have a bit of Americans coming to join us.”
All jokes aside, though, de Warren stresses that the efforts to save the pub are serious.
“It’s the only establishment in the village that the public can meet. We don’t have a shop, we don’t have a cafe,” she explains. “I was born in that village. So it’s been there for my whole life, and it’s the first place I had a job. I was a dishwasher in the kitchen.”
De Warren has since moved from the village, touring the world as a musician. But for her parents, who have lived in the area for more than 35 years, the Elm Tree Inn is an integral part of their seaside village and daily life.
“It is a community,” Tim tells TODAY.com “A meeting point, a community hub, and has been ever since we’ve been there. It’s been under different ownership over the years, usually by organizations, and they try to keep it going, but the current owners said it’s no longer financially viable.”
The trio all tell me the activities that would suffer without the pub: crochet club, book club, quiz nights and late night drinks. The older men of the village often exercise at the Inn, too.
“We think table tennis is a really good way for physical and mental mental health,” Tim says.
De Warren says that it would be “really strange” if the Inn wasn’t there anymore.
