Help, my historic local pub has turned into a brasserie
My local pub has closed down, to be converted into a brasserie.
Ye Olde Cherry Tree in Southgate, north London had been trading since 1695 but today it's covered in scaffolding. It's unclear what building work is going on behind that scaffolding – it's Grade II listed so presumably there are some constraints. It's also unclear whether it will retain the historic name, but it's already listed on the brewery's website as 'Browns Southgate'. However its pub days are over.
Although the closure prompted dismay locally, it has had minimal attention on a national or even London-wide scale, overshadowed as it was by the closure of another Ye Olde nearby, the rather better known Swiss Cottage. But even losing two historic pubs in the same part of the city in the same week is completely unremarkable: recent stats show that by the end of last year we were losing as many as 34 a month in England and Wales. Now the news that the average price of a pint is set to rise to £5.01 for the first time next month will cause more doom and gloom among the nation's pub goers and landlords struggling with rising costs.
A recent YouGov poll found only 50 per cent of the public had visited any public house in the last month – and 17 per cent hadn't been to one in over a year, if ever. Another study, by Altus Group, found that 412 pubs had gone out of business last year alone, the biggest fall since the pandemic obliterated hundreds.
Pubs are seemingly under attack from all sides: the cost of living crisis, the tax man, and even, as The Crooked House in Staffordshire notoriously found, arsonists. The Sekforde in Clerkenwell is the latest to face attempts from neighbours to get it closed down for being too noisy. It survived this month – just.
A £250 million government scheme, The Community Ownership Fund, which enabled groups of locals to take ownership of cherished pubs which might otherwise be demolished was wound up at the end of last year. There are now 200 such pubs but it looks like there won't be any more.
So why are pubs having such a rough time and how can they avoid the fate of The Cherry Tree?
Roger Protz, a former editor of The Good Beer Guide, has been writing about pubs for 50 years. He told me: 'At the end of the Second World War there were 100,000 pubs in this country. Now there are fewer than 40,000. You wouldn't get this in France or Germany – they wouldn't let their vineyards be torn up. But in the UK we let this happen. There are steps that the Government can take to stop this but they haven't.'
These include, he explains, removing the VAT on pub food and drinks, reducing business rates and cutting excise duty.
'It's crazy that you can go into a supermarket and buy lager for £1 – as cheap as water – but the same drink in a pub will cost you £5. When you buy a pint in a pub in England, a third of your money is going to the Government. But in Germany the equivalent tariff is just 2p.
'You wouldn't tax a Norman church until it's forced to close down – so why would you tax a Georgian pub in this way? These are heritage institutions and community resources that should be the pride of the country.'
But amid the gloom, there are occasional positives: 'In my hometown, St Albans, we have recently seen Ye Olde Fighting Cocks [often said to be the oldest pub in the country], come back from closure. And three new pubs have opened too – there can be successes.'
This idea of pubs opening or reopening leads me to Oisín Rogers. Aside perhaps from Jeremy Clarkson, whose Farmer's Dog in Oxfordshire has been rammed since it opened last August, Rogers's The Devonshire off Piccadilly Circus is probably the most successful new/old pub of recent times. What was previously a Jamie Oliver restaurant is now winning rave reviews as a pub/restaurant.
'There's a lot of pessimism,' Rogers said. 'And I don't think it helps. You hear it all the time: the energy bills, the cost of beer, the tax, and all that. But misery is self-perpetuating and as a customer the last thing you want in a pub is a miserable atmosphere – to be thinking about politics or economics.
'Part of the problem is that so many are still brewery-owned. And those don't tend to be as good as the independents. One of the reasons for that is that the wages are so poor for someone to work a 70 hour week, in a stressful environment with all that responsibility for making it work.'
Rogers goes on: 'A pub will only work if it's loved. People love pubs that love themselves and that starts with the publican – if they're not happy that radiates out. You want a good atmosphere, not a constant turnover of managers, no consistent identity.'
But even the success of one pub can cause another to suffer. It emerged this month that the nearest pub to Clarkson's, The Three Horseshoes in Asthall, Oxfordshire, has been listed for sale since it was eclipsed and takings slumped.
Writer Sam Cullen has just published a book, London's Lost Pubs. Reading his vignettes of their stories – a mixture of bad decisions and disastrous rebrands – is depressing. How some of them were allowed to go is mystifying. Take The Beatles's 'local', The Heroes of Alma was the nearest boozer to Abbey Road studios and the zebra crossing where dozens of Beatles fans turn up daily to be photographed. The fab four were regulars – and this alone you'd think would have secured its future. But it was converted into housing in 2002.
Cullen says many pubs today seem to see redemption in food sales: 'They are under pressure to maximise income on all fronts so you don't find many these days that don't do food. But some are really just restaurants in the shell of an old pub.'
This chimed with my recent experience in Suffolk: The Unruly Pig has been named gastropub of the year three times and its food was indeed sensational. But I left feeling that the title was a misnomer as it's not really a pub at all, just a very good restaurant.
Similarly in gentrified Bruton, Somerset, the flagship destination for 'down from London' weekend users is the Michelin-starred Osip restaurant, where the set lunch costs £120 and the wine list starts at £50. It's set in the building that for 250 years previously was The Bull Inn, serving locals £4 beer, rather than media millionaires like Gary Lineker or Stella McCartney.
Cullen went on: 'I think the key thing that stops a pub just being a restaurant is that you feel you can go in for just a drink. You don't need a reservation and someone holding an iPad isn't going to spring at you as you enter, asking 'Are you dining with us today?'
'I'm not a big fan of traditional pub grub or those now staple roasts which all come with big Yorkshire puddings and cost £17. But I do like stumbling on an interesting kitchen. The other day I was in The Stag's Head off Great Portland Street and they had a Greek pop up. Or The Coach and Horses in Leyton where I encountered a Sri Lankan kitchen.'
Indeed, following the closure of The Cherry Tree, my 'new' local, will be The Osidge Arms, a 1930s inn which retains its pubbiness while offering rather good and very cheap Turkish food.
But even if your local does switch its status to restaurant, this may not mean Michelin stars are heading its way: Camra, the Campaign for Real Ale, issued a recent warning that property developers are using a ruse to make it easier to get planning permission to convert pubs into housing if they convert them into restaurants first - a way of bending planning rules.
And sometimes it seems that showing the pub is not financially viable might help here. Cullen continues: 'You do come across places where you get a frosty welcome – sometimes it can be literally cold – and you wonder if the place is being rundown deliberately to make planning changes easier.'
Two novice publicans who are trying to take on board much of this advice are Annabel Cochrane and John Hunter who took on The Red Lion in the village she grew up in, Blewbury in Oxfordshire, four years ago.
They poured their own money into it – buying out the brewery that had owned it for decades and turning it into a freehouse. And since then it's been a labour of love to try to turn its fortunes around. They now put on guest kitchen nights – offering rotating food themes, as well as quizzes, events, anything to attract interest and affection.
Annabel said: 'We wanted to bring people locally back in. And then have a profile outside the village too. We offer food but also be fully open to people who only want a drink. We make sure we are open, from noon every day, with a fire in the grate and a warm welcome.
'It can feel like everything is stacked against you but we are determined to make it work. It's hugely challenging but enormous fun too.'
But if you are already popular, it can be about gently tweaking a formula to keep it winning. Thomas Craig took over The Woodman, a cherished traditional pub with rotating cask ales, in rural Hertfordshire from his father, who had run it for 25 years, in 2006.
He said: 'Any changes we make provoke uproar – when we replaced the old sticky carpet for example. So we have to be careful not to lose what makes the place special. We have made small adjustments like switching from cash only to offer contactless. But very cautiously. We still only serve the same sandwich we have for 40 years, a take-it or leave it cheese and onion toastie.'
But back to The Cherry Tree. Comments on a neighbourhood Facebook page show how missed it is already: 'I had my hen night here', 'I worked here for years, it was a second home', 'I turned up for a drink the other day and was horrified to find it closed'.
This is what we are losing – not just public houses but shared community experience.
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