Blight of faceless profiteers

This is about pubs in St Albans in Hertfordshire. Don't turn the page, because it's probably happening to the pubs where you live. When Whitbread sold its pubs in 2000, it held on to some that it converted into style bars. In St Albans, it turned a pub of some historic importance called the Mile House into something called the Café Bar. St Albans is packed with pubs. It's one of the most heavily pubbed places in Britain, with around 60 hostelries for what is, despite its city status, a small and compact town. But the pubs are not evenly spread. They tend to nestle in the centre of the city. Many of them were built at the same time as the great abbey cathedral of St Alban was constructed, and they offered food, ale and accommodation to a small army of building workers. Once the abbey was completed, pilgrims flocked to the shrine of Alban, the first Christian martyr in England. If they came from London and the south, they would pause for refreshment at a tavern one mile from the abbey, which is how the pub acquired its name. There was considerable anger a couple of years ago when the Mile House was turned into a café bar. It was the only pub in the immediate vicinity and served a large housing estate. Residents complained they no longer felt welcome at the café bar. Many wanted to drop in for a quiet drink, but the bar was geared to attracting young people. Older residents in particular felt uncomfortable in the place, while those on restricted incomes could no longer afford the prices for food and drink. Now no one will be able to eat or drink in the bar because it is being demolished, to make way for new housing. St Albans needs a new housing estate like a stone in the kidney, but such is the super-inflated price of property in St Albans that Whitbread cannot pass up the chance of making a fat profit on the site. The directors of Whitbread don't give a damn for the interests of the residents, who will have to walk the proverbial mile to the nearest pub. It is blinkered business, for a well-run pub on the site could make a mint. Not only is it surrounded by residential housing, but the London Road on which it stands has several hotels and B&Bs, whose guests might well consider popping to the local for a drink or a bite. But never mind the customers. Just think of the large cheque for several million pounds that is warming the Whitbread coffers. The people who live around the pub are not the only ones to suffer in St Albans. There used to be a pub just round the corner from my house, the King William IV. Noble House bought it from one of the nationals and turned into a Jim Thompson's Thai restaurant. You can have just a drink at the bar but as it doesn't sell the type of beer that attracts me, I haven't been in. It also has a curious restriction for a middle-market restaurant: it doesn't permit anyone under the age of 18. So I shan't be visiting it with my two young sons. At one fell swoop, Noble House has turned the old "King Will" into a restrictive place that excludes cask-ale drinkers and won't allow children to eat. A mile away, the Ancient Briton is another pub that has been lost to the community. In common with the Mile House, it was a pub of some historic importance. It stood opposite an ancient pathway called Beech Bottom Dyke, built by Celtic tribes before the arrival of the Romans in the area. The tribes joined forced with Queen Boudicca to sack the Roman town of Verulamium. The Ancient Briton belonged to Bass. It was passed to Six Continents, became a Harvester restaurant, and is now part of Mitchells & Butlers. You can't enjoy a drink at the bar as the restaurant is reserved strictly for diners. This is the blight that uncaring, faceless profiteers have inflicted on the drinkers of St Albans. It will happen to you next. www.protzonbeer.com