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is for: THE ALHAMBRA. After extensive digging around in the archives I thought I was pretty well up on the lost pubs of Croydon – well, central Croydon at least. So it came as a great shock to me when the editor of this great organ appeared in the pub one evening with a tattered local history pamphlet, which contained a drawing of a rather fancy-looking
public house at the bottom of Wellesley Road called the Alhambra. After a bit of archive-rummaging I found the place in Wellesley Road – it stood where buses turn in to go to West Croydon bus station – and one photograph: a shot of the place being demolished. More of that further on. It was built during the great pub building boom of the 1860s and 70s. The drawing in the local history booklet shows a building that had some mildly flamboyant architectural features, possibly as a homage to its namesake, the Alhambra Palace in Spain. It was initially a beerhouse; its application for a spirits license was refused in 1873. For the next one hundred years it seemed to go about its trade. I have no anecdotal or official evidence of what sort of boozer it was. It may have been perfection, it may have been hell; but, as I always say, a pub is a pub is a pub. Except for ********** (censored for legal reasons – the editor ). Then, in 1975, at the tail end of the destructive mania for replacing solid Victorian architecture with gimcrack brutalist office blocks, an application was entered to build just such a block on the ground where the Alhambra stood. The process became a running story in the local press, including the long-defunct Croydon Mid-Week Post. Labour Councillor Bob Bishop opposed the redevelopment, presciently observing that the plan would be “…probably the first in an avalanche of people out to make a fortune at the expense of the community.” Here’s to old Bob – he’d seen the
future and it stunk! Of course, the pub was doomed. The only picture in the official archive is this one of it being bludgeoned to death with pickaxes early in 1978. The area is now a banal, concrete ‘nowhere’. When passing the spot, the pedestrian is urged to pause awhile and think of the dangers of official planning folly and also to raise an imaginary toast to the long-lost Alhambra. Pic: Croydon Local Studies Library
Find out more about Lost Croydon Pubs by joining the Facebook group: OLD CROYDON BOOZERS AND CLUBS (NOW DEMOLISHED OR CLOSED)