Estate pubs
The 1960s and the 1970s were the last period when any quantity of new, purpose-built pubs were constructed. In either inner-city areas which had been cleared, new suburbs or whole new towns.
Brewers were very keen on acquiring such sites. Large modern premises without any nearby competition were likely to be very profitable. So much so, that brewers were happy to trade in the licences of two or three small inner-city pubs in exchange.
In the valuation of Hole’s tied estate made before their takeover by Courage, the highest valued was the Lincoln Imp, a pub in a new estate in Lincoln. It was listed as being worth £91,500, when most of the pubs in Newark were valued at between £8,000 and £15,000.
As time went on, these profit machines sometimes turned into quite scary venues, depending on the nature of the housing estate around it. Pubs on rough estates tended to be, well, rough. As the saying went: never drink in a flat-roofed pub.
The Cardinal’s Hat in Newark was an example of a fairly rough estate pub. Though not as terrifying as such pubs could be in larger cities.
Clearance pubs
One of the oddities of slum clearances is that the pubs often remained after all the housing had been demolished. Such pubs looked very sad standing alone in a sea of devastation. Sometimes they remained when the district was rebuilt. For others it was just a question of a stay of execution.
When I first moved to Leeds there were a couple of such pubs in Sheepscar. Which were the first place I ever tasted handpulled Tetley’s Mild. And what a revelation that was. There was a reason why those pubs still had beer engines.
In the early 1970s, Tetley replaced handpulls with electric pumps. Basically. for hygiene reasons. Their only houses which retained beer engines were ones which they didn’t expect to be around for long.
I think the roughest pub I've ever been in was the now demolished flat roofed one we wandered into as teenagers at dinnertime on a French "A" Level day in the late eighties, across the road from Salford University on the Pendleton estate. It's the only time I've walked into a pub and it's fallen silent, although the sight of the three of us in school uniform ordering halves of Boddies bitter must have been pretty incongruous for the regulars. Maybe it was our youth, the time of day or just their bemusement, but after the initial shock and laughter the locals were actually pretty friendly.
ReplyDeleteI wonder who came up with “Never drink in a flat roof pub?
ReplyDeleteInteresting that many have closed. We do have estate pubs in Dublin and many are rough.
Oscar
The Flying Saucer in Speke, Liverpool. Roughest pub I ever went in. Yikes!
ReplyDeleteMy favourite "clearance" pub that I never actually set foot in is the Rowers Arms in Dunston (Tyne & Wear)
ReplyDeleteIt stood at the end of a single row of terraced houses in the fields outside of Dunston, West View Terrace which is one of my earliest memories as several relations and ancestors lived there!
The terrace got demolished perhaps in the 90s but the Rowers still remained and became a rooming house with a restaurant. What saved it was the Metro Centre just down the road so it became a popular place for visiting workers and sales people to stay close to the job.
Recently it's been upgraded to a former magnificence which I suspect it never had when the crowds of drunks got chucked out at closing time back in the 50s when as a 4 year old they would wake me up with their singing and shouting as they passed Grandad's back bedroom window!!
https://www.booking.com/hotel/gb/therowershotel.en-gb.html
Interesting story.
DeleteOscar