Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Heavy metal pub licence clash
The lead singer of a local rock band is campaigning to save a “heavy metal” pub from losing its licence.
Wincheap’s Maiden’s Head has been under attack since 2012 from a neighbour who reports beats and thrashing chords heard late into the evening.
A council licensing sub-committee will decide its fate in September after the case was adjourned late last month.
Now Christoper Dabner, frontman of Jukebox Monkey, has set up an online petition to safeguard the “important cultural hub”.
He told the Gazette: “This is about the principle of someone complaining about a pub that’s been there for a very long time.
“About how licensing committees don’t necessarily hear how their actions affect the people that go there.
“This is an important cultural hub that’s frequented by hundreds of people. It’s extremely rare.”
In his online petition, which has attracted almost 1,000 signatures, Mr Dabner cites the Maiden’s Head as one of the few “shining lights” of the live music scene.
“Canterbury is one of very few towns in Kent that properly The Maiden’s head pub, Wincheap
caters for the live rock scene,” he writes.
“There are precious few places in which heavy styles of music can be performed and losing another is unthinkable.”
Resident Virginia Lloyd Owen – who moved to Wincheap six years ago – first complained about the pub’s music licence in
2012, when it was under different ownership.
In her grounds for calling the latest licence review, she writes: “These are heavy metal rock bands with particular problems with drum and bass.”
She describes “shouting, screaming and singing”, as well as bottles being smashed and motorbikes leaving and departing the pub.
She also writes of “disturbance to the front of the property where people lie on pavements, drink and smoke.”
Licence reviews can result in mediation between parties, a tweak of licence conditions or even complete revocation.
Mr Dabner, a music tutor, says the heavy metal genre is frequently misunderstood.
“We might have strange black clothes and mad hair, but the fans of heavy music are intelligent, peaceful, and importantly, community minded,” he writes.
“Of course the music is aggressive, and sounds ugly to an untrained palette, but the music is in fact every bit as complex, nuanced and intelligent as any other genre.”
The pub’s licence is held by Amherst Enterprises Limited.
Mrs Lloyd Owen says she is speaking to pub landlord Richard West in the hope of resolving the issue before September’s hearing.
“No one is calling for the pub to be shut down, or anything ridiculous like that,” she said.
“We just want there to be some degree of sense and for things to be toned down, as they were in 2012.
“Hopefully we can reach a resolution and there will be no need for a hearing.”
The petition can be accessed at change.org.
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