The valentine’s village

Love is always in the air when your village is named Lover, but never more so than in February. For around two weeks,  the ‘most romantic village in the world’, transforms itself into the Valentine’s Day village.

Lover Village

Romantic residents adorn their front doors, gardens, fences and hedges with hearts and heart-shaped bunting. 

For decades, thousands of cards have been sent to the village (actually pronounced low-ver) to receive the special Lover postmark. The post office is now closed, but for the last five years, the community has continued the tradition by running a pop-up post office for the Valentine’s period. It has sent out 12,000 cards to every continent on earth – including Antarctica.

The Valentine’s post office

Backed by Royal Mail, the post office is manned by volunteers known as Cupids and also sells cards featuring images such as the village sign and Stanley, a local dog born on Valentine’s Day. Running alongside the pop-up in what was once the local school building is the Darling Cafe, run by locals the Darling (yes, really) family.

When the national lockdown first began, Lover Community Trust ran a campaign encouraging those who couldn’t meet in real life to ‘send a little love’ to friends and family , not just their beloveds. The campaign continues this year.

The Valentine’s venture has seen the trust gather almost £50,000 in donations towards creating a community centre. Since losing its post office, swiftly followed by its school and pub, the centre will appropriately become the heart of Lover community.

For more information, visit Lover’s website here.