The new owners of a flood-hit north Cumbrian pub have pledged to give their village its local back.

Margaret Watson and Ron Brand have bought the Stag Inn at Crosby-on-Eden, near Carlisle, which has stood empty for more than a year.

In recent weeks the couple, who have made the move from Wisbech, King's Lynn, in Norfolk, have been putting in long shifts to knock their new home and the pub back into shape - and hope to be pulling pints by Easter.

Margaret grew up in the village and remembers going to the Stag in her late teens but at the time never once thought that one day she would become its owner.

Coming back to Cumbria to visit her family, the couple would pass the pub every month.

When it was put up for sale Ron made enquiries.

"He said, 'I think we'll buy that.' And I said, 'Are you for real,'" recalls Margaret, 58.

"This is all Ron's doing.

"I'm absolutely ecstatic. I'm over the moon. I just couldn't allow myself to get too happy while it was all going on."

For Margaret it was important for her home village to keep its pub.

"It is a villager's pub and it looks like a public house," she said.

"I think it's important for the community to have their village pub.

"It's been a pub for as long as I can remember. I was 17 when I first walked through the door of the Stag," she said.

When Storm Desmond hit Cumbria in December 2015, the pub was one of a number of properties in the village which was submerged with murky flood water - along with the school and a number of homes.

It had been stripped back to bare brick and plaster.

The couple will be taking on most of the further work themselves.

They are currently refurbishing the house before work is due to start on renovating the pub.

"It's like starting a whole new renovation really," said Margaret.

"We will keep it very much how it is but we will put our own touches on it.

"Ron has his ideas. He would like to possibly move the toilets but the aim at first is to get the bar open, then we'll concentrate on finding a chef and getting the meals up and running again.

"As far as food goes, we would like it to be typical, traditional, British grub.

"From all the people we've spoken to who come to see us they all say it's fab.

"There's just been so much guess work as to who had taken it over."

She and Ron, 64, a self-employed plumber, have both worked in bars and restaurants but have never owned a place of their own.

Margaret, an elderly care worker, has an uncle who ran the Crossing at Roweltown and a pub at Gretna, while Peter Milnes, who used to own the Stag, and was a member of a community group who tried to buy it, has offered his assistance.

"If they want advice or anything, I've given them my number and said I'm there to help," said Peter, who was the landlord there from 1999 to 2006.

"They've been successful in buying it and they're a nice couple who are going to keep the pub open.

"That's what it's all about really.

"It's been closed for over a year. It's the pinnacle of the village, the pub.

"That's why we tried to buy it as a community. It's the hub of the village."