Carrington Arms staff saves wedding guest's life

Staff at the Carrington Arms helped save the life of a 25-year-old wedding guest who suffered a heart attack in the middle of an event.

Peter Dodman, owner of the Carrington Arms, said: "Around 80 people were gathered in the hall and it was a shocking scene. It's the type of stuff you see on TV; you don't really see it in real life. The woman had to be resuscitated twice. It was pure luck Paul was there that day - he was brilliant."

Jenny Thomas, who suffered the heart attack, posted a message on the inn's Facebook page. She said: "Your staff saved my life and I will be forever grateful of that. Not only did you give my mother her daughter alive, you gave a special, beautiful little girl her mummy still alive and I will be forever in debt to you."

Bride Natasha Clewley also commented: "We've had a beautiful reception, the Carrington Arms' support up until the day was great and on the day nothing short of heroic!"

The Carrington Arms is now trying to raise money for the East Anglian Air Ambulance, which attended the incident.

The fundraising initiative has also been spurred on by a negative TripAdvisor review about the venue from a member of the wedding party. The reviewer felt they had been misled that breakfast was not included in the price and described the owner as "grumpy".

Dodman said: "It's a shame about the bad TripAdvisor review; it's a weird situation where the turn of events went from bad to good back to bad again."

He added: "People in the industry are trapped by the website in question. I accept businesses will get bad reviews, but feel this one is completely unjustified as the customer booked 'room only' and we explained breakfast was an additional charge.

"It's a one-way street as there doesn't seem to be a proper complaints procedure."

James Kay, a spokesperson for TripAdvisor, said: "TripAdvisor was built to give customers a platform to share their honest opinions, good or bad. We value the insights of the business owners as well as travellers and both are given an equal opportunity to speak to the TripAdvisor community - in fact, owners always have the last word in the management response tool."

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