A small rural community has won the right to buy a local pub which closed its doors in September in a historic decision.

However, the present owners who want to turn it into a five-bedroom family home, say it is a Pyrrhic victory because the last pint has been served there.

Local residents in the dispersed community, concerned that the heart of social life in the area would be lost forever, formed the Friends of Midmar Inn Community Company and used the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, normally associated with crofters, to seek the "right to buy" the inn in Aberdeenshire.

They launched a Save the Midmar Inn website and gathered hundreds of names on a petition against the plan to change it into a house.

Scottish ministers have granted their wish saying that reinstating the pub will help halt the decline of the community.

But the community only has first option to buy if the pub is put up for sale and Debi Begg and David Cooper, who ran the pub for three years before declining business prompted them to close it, say that will not happen.

They have submitted plans to Aberdeenshire Council to change the use of the building, classed as part-public and part-private residence, to residential and to build an extension.

Ms Begg said: "They only have the right to buy if we sell it and it is not for sale. We intend to turn it into our beautiful home.

"Many of the people who signed the petition should be totally ashamed of themselves because they have never been in here. Our regulars were far from local and the locals were far from regular." She added that even if their application was turned down they still would not sell.

Margot Kennedy, secretary of the Friends of Midmar, said: "Should the inn be put on the market the community body now has first refusal to buy it. We are fighting the planning application as enthusiastically as we claimed the right to buy."