A RETIRED nurse from Bury has moved back to the town to have a shot at running the Turf Hotel with her husband.

Kathryn Palmer, aged 59, met her husband Richard in 2002 on the internet and moved to his home in Wolverhampton.

She has now come back to her roots, influenced by a family tragedy.

Her sister died suddenly in June last year, and the incident hit Mrs Palmer hard.

She said: “She wasn’t very well one weekend and kept vomiting.

We just thought it was food poisoning, but a few days later I got a phone call saying she had died.

“But it is wonderful to be back. The first thing I did was go to the market to buy a black pudding—the stuff we got in the Midlands was not as good as in Bury.”

Mrs Palmer lived in Tottington Road in Woolfold as a child, and worked as a staff nurse at Fairfield Hospital until she was forced to retire 15 years ago due to ill health as she suffered three mini strokes.

She has two daughters and a grandson as well as nieces and nephews, and the pair decided the time was right to move closer to family.

Mr Palmer has been the landlord at six pubs in the past, and the Turf, in Wash Lane, re-opened in March after being vacant for six months.

He says it was the right time to move as his job selling spare parts for commercial vehicles in the Midlands was coming to an end, and that the outlook at the Turf is positive as more people start to hear it has been re-opened.

“It is always difficult when the pub is closed for a time, people get used to drinking elsewhere, but slowly word is getting around that the Turf is back open,” he said.

“My family have kept pubs for many generations.

I haven’t had a pub on my own since the 1990s but this will be my sixth pub in my own name.

“I have always liked Bury, we were up here five or six times a year to see family, and I think people from Bury are much more friendly.”