Let’s drink to the health of the English pub – sadly, it needs it
The bell tolls once more for the English pub. Over the years it has become a mournful sound in villages and towns from the Lizard to Lindisfarne, and the publication of the latest Good Beer Guide deepens the funereal mood. Each week, it tells us, 21 pubs shut their doors.
We’ve all seen them, inns and taverns that are now boarded up or do service as shops, dental surgeries, offices or social housing. Every week brings evidence of another closure, insignificant to most people but sad to those who knew the place.
Some pubs are the authors of their downfall. The less salubrious parts of our cities abound with grotty hovels populated by low-lifers, and even in agreeable villages there are pubs the discriminating drinker prefers to avoid, for the quality of company no less than the ale.
However, as Roger Protz, the Guide’s outgoing editor, points out in his final sermon to the faithful, the English pub is unique, “with an atmosphere that could never be replaced”. The best have always found a way of adapting.
There are problems. It is now considered acceptable to charge more than £5 for a pint in London, and, even though beer is less dear beyond the M25, many drinkers head for the supermarkets and the cheap booze on offer there. Some of these guzzlers rarely set foot in a pub.
Business rates continue to hit innkeepers hard. The Baum in Rochdale, voted pub of the year in 2012 by the Campaign for Real Ale, faces a whopping increase of 377 per cent. There is something to be said for Camra’s proposal of a £5,000 rate reduction for every pub in the land.
But who goes to the pub to save money? Most regulars cherish their local for other reasons, which may be summed up in a single word: companionship. You can’t find that by sitting at home, watching the television or tweeting to imaginary friends. Each pub creates its own world, which is shaped by the folk who use it.
Surely talking to fellow regulars over a mug or six of ale, in the manner of drinkers since Alfred burned the cakes, is better than communing with keyboard warriors on social media. Those of a certain generation know that propping up the bar is a much better way to start debate, and secure the “likes” and “dislikes” of one’s peers. Who needs Facebook when you have the Saloon Bar? Talk has always gone with grog, and if much of the talk is balls, where better to talk balls than a public house, where most sins are known, and forgiven? As David Hockney once said: “They’re not health clubs, you know.”
Every pub-goer has favourites. This summer I have revisited the Ram Inn at Firle, the Bridge at Ripponden, the Lincolnshire Poacher in Nottingham, the Nag’s Head at Malvern, and the Baum. Great pubs all, however different they may be in character and custom.
Two months ago Gerry O’brien said goodbye to the Churchill in Kensington after 32 years as guvnor. As the Irish landlord of a London pub that serves Fuller’s ales and Thai food to an international clientele, he ran a modern, but very English local.
Not all pubs are as fine as the Churchill. But they can work in other ways. Protz’s favourite is the Olde Gate in the Derbyshire village of Brassington, so far away from London W8 it might as well be on the moon. There’s no one way of defining the perfect pub. But there’s plenty of fun to be had trying to find it.