8.0 Grim Reaper of Pubs

GRIM REAPER OF PUBS

England’s pubs have been closing steadily since the late nineteenth century and the ‘UK has lost 21,000 pubs since 1980. Half of these closures have taken place since 2006.’ 32 It is obvious from the number of closures in recent years that the financial crash has had a significant impact on the industry. Yet the issue has come under little scrutiny, with closures often viewed through an economist’s lens and attributed to inevitable changes in consumer habits. Whilst these rapid closures are blamed on a number of consumer-oriented and legislative factors such as the smoking ban, liquor licenses and the rise of cheap supermarket beer 33, the decline of the pub is largely down to pub development’s close dependency on the housing market.

Developers pursue a model of ‘highest and best use’ in order to maximise profit on each site, and many developers have paid particular interest to pubs abandoned derelict by PubCos after the financial crash. ‘The Campaign For Real Ale (CAMRA) estimated in 2008 that a third of all shuttered pubs were converted into secondary businesses. Another third became residential properties. The final third were demolished.’ 34

Tom Lamont, in his piece in the Guardian, exposes the business of individual pub developers, which he terms ‘Grim Reaper(s) of pubs’ 35, buying failed pubs with the intention of building flats or converting into supermarkets. This is the fate of many public houses, amongst them the Rose and Crown in Upperby, Carlisle, built to Harry Redfern’s design as part of the Carlisle Experiment. The pub was built as a precursor to, and gradually enveloped by, a newly expanding suburb of Carlisle, which it served until it was closed, demolished and converted into 6 rather tight semi-detached houses by Cumbrian Properties Ltd in 2013. When such substantial profit can be made through this process it is no surprise that England’s pubs are now being flogged as flats.

Figure 11 - Rose and Crown, Upperby on completion.

Figure 12 - Rose and Crown, Upperby, derelict in 2008.

Figure 13 - The former Rose and Crown, now housing.

34 Tom Lamont, ‘The Death and Life of the Great British Pub’, The Guardian (London, 13 October 2015) <https://www. theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/oct/13/ the-death-and-life-of-a-great-britishpub>. 35 Lamont. Figure 11 Fig 5 - The Rose and Crown, Upperby, Near Carlisle in Basil Oliver, ‘English Inns’, Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 1932, 545–67.

Figure 12 Rose and Trev Clough, The Rose & Crown, Upperby (March 2008) <geograph.org.uk/p/6006324> [accessed 23 March 2021]