PUBGOING GOING OUT OF STYLE
LONDON — With its comfy sofas, open fires, choice of beers on tap and clutch of regulars propping up the bar, the Eagle pub in Battersea is as traditional an ale house as they come.
“It’s a focal part of the community,” said Graham Hill, 65, a regular of the Victorian pub. “People of all ages can meet here, and you’re a friend, not just a customer. It would be a great loss if it were to close.”
But regular pubgoers the length and breadth of the country are facing just that, as the Great British pub is forced out by modern life and financial troubles. As a result, names like the King’s Head, the White Hart and the Old Red Lion could be names soon consigned to history books rather than British high streets and village greens.
“What has always fascinated me is that when a shop closes there is sadness, but when a pub closes there is such an emotional reaction, people are outraged, even those who don’t use the pub, because it is vital to a community’s wellbeing,” said John Longden, chief executive of Pub is the Hub, a scheme spearheaded by Prince Charles, which helps landlords and local communities to revive ailing pubs.
Despite their storied history at the very heart of British society dating back to the Roman empire, many pubs haven’t been able to withstand the effects of the economic crisis and the very modern phenomenon of cheap supermarket booze, often sold at prices six times lower than in the pub.
“Some supermarkets are selling beer for cheaper than water,” explained Tony Jerome, a spokesman for the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) which promotes community pubs, and traditional, unfiltered, unpasteurized beer. “You can pick up a 5 percent beer for 80 cents a can, the equivalent in a pub could be $5.50.”
The locals, as pubs are known colloquially, are closing at a rate of 18 per week, according to the latest figures.
A business model focused on shortterm profit and above-inflation yearly tax increases on beer, known as the beer-escalator, has led to many pubs being unable to survive.
More than half of Britain’s pubs are now owned by large pub companies (pubcos), which offer publicans a cheaper lease on condition that they buy all their products from that company.
As prices go up these “tied landlords,” as they are known, don’t have the option to shop around and switch suppliers. The higher costs are passed on to Nearly 6,000 landlords having gone out of business in the last four years. Since 2008, the number of regular pubgoers in the United Kingdom has declined by 3 million. the customers, who go elsewhere. Add in the servicing of debts from the pubcos’ over-borrowing on property, and eventually pubs are forced to close.
According to Paul Jennings, historian and author of “The Local: A History of the British Pub,” pub numbers reached a peak in 1869.
“Until the late 19th century ‘going to the pub’ was the only evening leisure activity people had,” he said.
The decline of tight-knit working class communities and male-dominated industries like mining, particularly from the 1970s, dealt pubs a blow.
At the Gorringe Park pub on an otherwise unglamorous high street in Tooting in south London, new owners have refurbished a former dingy local to include a “boutique movie room” where they show feature films in the evenings and in the daytime for parents and children. There is also an upstairs restaurant and a private dining room, while the ground floor remains a pub in the more traditional sense.
“This is the modern incarnation of the local pub,” explained Ed Harper, manager at the Gorringe Park. “It’s what a local pub should be, relaxed and friendly, like a home away from home but able to respond to the ever changing needs of the market.”
Others London publicans riding this wave now sell clothes, secondhand books, fruit and vegetables, run fish and chip shops, or host week-day activities for children, using social media to spread the word.
“There is a tidal wave of change in rural and urban communities with the closure of hundreds of services —bookshops, garages, grocery shops, post offices,” Longden said.