When your local pub shuts down...

[max_tranmere]

They're closing in London at the rate of several each week and I think it's a shame as all that history is gone. A pub near me is shutting soon after 200 years, it has been a pub since the day that street was laid out, and is only closing because the building is so valuable as other uses, not because it's failing as a business.People would have had their last drink with their son in there before he went off to the Crimean War, and he never came back. People would have had a similar night with their teenage lad in there the night before he went off to Flanders in WW1 - and never returned. The same with WW2.

People would have had wedding parties in there, the same couple having the christening party in there for their first kid, the family having the wedding knees-up in there for the same kid on the day he or she later tied the knot. Funerals too. Everything. A proper community pub that has been central to local families' lives for generations and generations. Now all that history is going because the present owner can't resist an offer from a property developer to turn the upper floors into flats and to turn the ground floor into a shop. This is happening all over London, and all over the country.

I think there should be preservation orders on pubs and they should have to stay as pubs - unless the business is really failing and then the owner would inevitably want out. At the moment you can shut down a pub as easily as shutdown a newsagents. No one cares about the history and how central that place may have been, and still is, to the community going back to when that district was first built. To me it's as big a thing as allowing someone to bulldoze over the town square, knock the statues down, and build a concrete car park. That wouldn't be allowed, but with old pubs that are just as known locally and are seen as just as much a part of the neighbourhood it is fine and no one cares.

People's views please.

[Arginald Valleywater]

Same everywhere Max. 2 gone in Carlisle in the last month. Neither will re-open. One already under offer from a builder.

[Robches]

I couldn't agree more.

[sparky]

If more people were earning a living wage and far fewer had long and costly daily journeys it would be a boost to pubs, restaurants, theatre, cinema, bowling alleys etc.

[Toddy]

Max,

As you say in your own post, this is happening all over the country. What I do find unusual with the pub you have commented on is that the business is not struggling for one reason or another.

The pub I frequent is struggling for a number of reasons:

1) Idiots previously running the pub. I say previous, as the current couple running the place appear to be doing a good job.

2) The neighbourhood. The pub is located in the Bradford West ward represented by George Galloway, you can guess the ethnic make up of the area. I live a little further away, not the neighbourhood.

3) The pub company, Enterprise Inns. Unless challenged they will try to lock you into extortionate rents. Even then, you are locked into buying your stock through them, again at over inflated prices.

I could go on. Why do I drink there? Depsite the issues, it is a good pub, serving good real ale and a generally great bunch of regulars (like these forums).

Well there is my pennys worth.

Take care all

Toddy

[Jonone]

The model of the pub trade seems to be get someone who has a redundancy pay-off and has always wanted to 'be their own boss'. Get them to buy-in and put the pay-off up as a surety. Let them run the pub for as long as it takes for the penny to drop that it's not profitable ie when the surety has been exhausted. They leave the pub trade and you look for the next 'victim'.

[Dave Wells]

60 pubs close every week. Now sure some open to or reopen but 60 a week is tragic !

[cockneygeezer2009]

Several pubs have closed down in my area and most have been converted into flats/accommodation which people really need. You can get cheap booze in any supermarket. Accommodation is more important than boozy pubs. There are plenty of drinking holes in city centres.

[planeterotica]

Until a few weeks ago i was using the Sun in Bethnal Green, every time i went there it was always busy now it's boarded up, why close a busy pub ?

[max_tranmere]

Interesting comments there. If this goes on there will be few pubs left, I had a chat with someone I know a few weeks ago about this and he said there will always be pubs because people will always need somewhere to drink. I am not sure though because some places, suburban areas of cities, have no amenities at all and they manage - all be it in a boring dull neighbourhood.

There will surely be pressure from breweries for the rate of closures to slow down if so many close that the breweries' business becomes only a shadow of what it was though. I've heard of some well known places shutting: the oldest pub in Chelsea is closing down, it is called something like the Lock Keys or something like that. Mark Knopfler from Dire Straits, who lives nearby, is apparently spearheading a campaign to keep it open. The Crown & Goose in Camden is shutting and Suggs from Madness is campaigning to keep it open. Both these cases have got a lot of publicity in London. The latter involves a successful pub but the owners of the land won't renew the lease as they want to turn the place into something else.