Punters at 400-year-old pub at risk of permanent closure in bid to save it
A GANG of tech-savy Boomers on a mission to save a historic pub reached out to Gen Z allies by speaking their language.
The Friends of the Elm Tree have racked up more than one million views in just 36 hours with their hilarious TikTok videos.
The locals have gone viral with their clips where they use popular expressions with the youngsters like "slay", "GOAT" (greatest of all time) and "spill the tea".
The group launched the online campaign to bring back the boozer in Langton Herring, Dorset, where bouncing bomb inventor Barnes Wallis stayed.
It closed its doors last year after 400 years of trading and locals are trying to raise the £600,000 needed to save it.
So far they have raised over £300,000 through shares, but time is running out so they decided to make the TikTok video to boost their profile.
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The video went live on Monday evening and within seven hours had hit 250,000 views.
The group has set up a Crowdfunding page for donations, which has already brought in £4,500 in a day from supporters as far afield as America, Canada and Australia.
Gen Z slang is a collection of words and phrases used by people born from late 1990s to early 2010s.
Towards the end of last year, a TikTok trend took off for businesses to create marketing videos using Gen Z expressions to reach a younger audience.
The Elm Tree's video describes "feeling salty" at the loss of their pub and ends with one older villager stating "where else would we be able to get lit on a Friday night?"
Nick Carroll from the campaign group said: "The TikTok is great, it has really raised the profile of the pub and we've set up a donation page for people to give whatever they can.
"We've had quite a lot come in just in the 12 hours since it launched, which is great. But we are running out of time now, we have until March 3 so it all helps."
During the Second World War, Wallis relocated to the south coast as he experimented with his ingenious bomb ahead of the Dambusters raid of 1943.
In late 1942 he used the five-mile long seawater lagoon called The Fleet that sits behind Chesil Beach, to conduct his top secret tests.
A modified Wellington bomber repeatedly flew in low over the body of water before releasing the bouncing bomb which skipped across the surface.
The experiments were so secret that even a nearby naval gun emplacement were not aware of it and started shooting at the aircraft.
The tests paved the way for Operation Chastise, the Dambusters raid on three dams in Germany's industrial Ruhr Valley.
During the testing Wallis lodged at the 17th century Elm Tree Inn and it is also said that Sir Winston Churchill visited the pub during a secret visit to The Fleet during this time.
During the Cold War it was rumoured to be a secret rendezvous point for Russian spies.
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Harry Houghton and his girlfriend Ethel Gee worked for the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment on nearby Portland and would wait for calls from their KGB controller at the Elm Tree.
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