Building Conservation Journal - RICS

Historic pubs
The trouble with pubs
Dale Ingram discusses why the traditional British public house is fast becoming an endangered species
Ask any first-time visitor to England what they are most looking
forward to and often they'll say something like, “your famous olde
worlde English pubs – we’ve nothing like that at home”. Some
imagine the 16th-century thatched country idyll by a village cricket green
like the Six Bells in Warborough, or the fulgurous magnificence of a lavish
urban Victorian emporium like The Falcon at Clapham Junction, all plate
glass, polished mahogany, brass and marble, bright and bustling with
animated noise. All will be eager to try, at least once, the singular ‘warm
brown beer’ which is as foreign and as English to them as the Queen
and our preoccupation with the weather.
Architecturally, the British public house, unlike its country houses,
say, or its town halls, has few if any direct parallels abroad. This historical
panoply of refreshment and bonhomie, handed down from its earliest
beginnings with the medieval ‘ale wife’ to the 20th-century purpose-built
‘boozer,’ is a truly unique British building type worthy of protection.
The biggest threat to our pubs is closure. At the peak, there was a net
loss of public houses in England of about one every three hours. From
a practical perspective, the factors that are the greatest threat to British
pubs can be loosely divided into two classes, and the way these factors
intertwine to reinforce each other is a fascinating subject that this article
cannot explore in depth. In short, the problems are as follows.
The trade
There are systemic problems with the way brewing and beer retailing is
organised. The 1989 Beer Orders created a two-tier industry. Brewers
sold their pub estates which became monolithic separate enterprises,
not perhaps the intention of the then government. The ‘pubco’ sector
today is effectively an oligopoly, characterised by a dominating handful
each owning thousands of premises (and between them the great
majority of the country’s pub stock), and a larger number of relatively tiny
niche operators. The major operators exercise an effective monopoly on
the ‘tied trade’.
Campaign for Real Ale’s (CAMRA’s) 2011 report, Tied Down, identifies
one of the biggest threats to the real ale sector as ‘the tie’, the system
by which pubs must buy their bar stock from the pubco at prices as
much as 80% higher than free houses dealing directly with breweries.
Combined with inflated rent on leased property, based not on open
market rents but, some would say, manipulation by pubcos of the
RICS rental assessment guidance, profitability is further reduced. In
some cases this causes real hardship and ultimately the closure of
the business. There are numerous examples of previously tied houses
returning to profitability once the tie is cut and they become free houses.
The Parliamentary Select Committee and government have identified
confusion over the interpretation of pub valuation guidance and the tied
pub sector is in peril while valuation remains open to abuse.
However, the Minister for Competition’s failure in 2011 to adopt the
recommendations of the report by the Commons Select Committee on
statutory regulation of the pubcos to level the playing field more equitably
between tenants and their landlords has met with a mixture of fury and
incredulity, not only from CAMRA but from the Select Committee itself.
As one licensee wrote following the Minister’s appearance in front of the
Committee, “I have already spoken to dozens of tenants who have said
they are throwing the keys back after Christmas”.
Restrictive covenants in sale contracts, whereby the purchaser agreed
not to operate as a licensed premises were a feature for many years.
4 Building Conservation Journal March-April 2012
Prior to the Beer Orders, they protected the brewery’s local trade,
but the effect since has been conversion of many marginal or even
successful pubs to alternate uses or outright demolition. The availability
of cheap supermarket booze is oft-quoted as a key reason for pub
closures, and while it is true that recently retailers are practically giving
it away, this is by no means as significant a factor as sellers make out.
Planning, economic and environmental factors
Housing shortfalls mean that almost any pub, however profitable, like
the Wenlock Arms in Hackney, is more valuable for its land than as a
going pub concern. It is unlisted and is the subject of a failed planning
application and a demolition notice, since withdrawn. However, Hackney
Council’s Cabinet in December revised and extended the neighbouring
conservation area which now includes the Wenlock, giving it statutory
protection from demolition.
Local authority interwar housing estates invariably featured purposebuilt
pubs by highly significant architects, some remaining in local
authority ownership. Interwar estate pubs were a later refinement of
the ‘Improved Public Houses’ movement, promoted on the ‘fewer
and better’ principle, and feature innovative spaces from bowling
greens and ‘Winter Garden’ conservatories to Ladies’ Rooms (no
alcohol to be served) and children’s playrooms. The spacious garden
settings of many an interwar pub, a significant and intrinsic part of their
original set-piece design, make them attractive to developers. But their
tucked-away locations in many instances have left them untouched
by the cosmetic makeovers of street-front pubs, increasing their
heritage value.
The Grade-II listed Dr Johnson, from 1938, by H Reginald Ross for
Courage at Barkingside is boarded and still looking for a new owner,
while the locally listed Morden Tavern [pictured] at the St Helier Estate in
Morden, from 1932, by Sir Harry Redfern for Truman’s, has been the
subject of a two-year planning battle over conversion into flats and the
development of the garden with housing. The scheme was thrown
out on January 12th by Merton’s planning committee, to the delight
of campaigners.
Successive ‘makeovers’ of pubs, creating open plan spaces and
decorating them in a ‘house style’, strip them of their historic layouts,
finishes and fittings, as at the Marquis of Granby in Shaftesbury Avenue,
originally designed by a well-regarded firm of Victorian theatre architects.
Even where the building is not demolished – because it is protected by
listing – upper floors are converted to flats, as at Crocker’s Folly in St
John’s Wood. Developers get around planning restrictions that protect
local amenities by claiming no threat to the public areas of the pub itself.
But the reality is that once consent is granted, the pub is unattractive
to would-be tenants.
Running a pub these days, even as a free house, rarely generates
enough income to meet the expense of living off-site, never mind the
implications for licensing purposes. Integrated premises are thus more
essential than ever to running an economic business. The Brewery Tap in
Wimbledon Village conservation area, a prime high street location, was
advertised as ‘former public house premises for alternative uses’ within
days of consent for conversion of its upper floors, and the Royal Oak
opposite the Town Hall in Wandsworth is struggling to find takers,
despite its prime location, after an upper floor conversion was given
consent last year.