I know the industry is awaiting the Budget with trepidation and hoping for some support to reflect comments of a number of MPs about the significance of the economic benefit of pubs as well as the other contributions I have outlined.
It is still slightly frustrating ‘at the sharp end’, where I represent pub clients; still too often applications to improve pubs are not regarded positively if the venue is well-run and has no issues but as an opportunity to impose further conditions. This is very frustrating because no differential is applied between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ operator.
My first recent pub experience, and neither of these involve any locals or indeed pubs I tend to visit in Nottingham City Centre after work or at the weekend, is as follows:
Last week, driving home from our Nottingham city centre office and perhaps rushing a little bit, I hit a kerb that was hidden by a fall of leaves and got an immediate flat puncture that flattened the tyre.
I was on a one-way system and foolishly decided to drive to a garage to try and pump it up so I could at least make it home. After about half a mile I realised I was going to damage the wheel so pulled over, coincidentally adjacent to a pub called the March Hare on Carlton Road, in Nottingham.
Local community
I have known of the pub for years and it was built in the late 1950s. It stands just outside Nottingham city centre between the St Ann’s estate and the Sneinton development, both well known Nottingham communities.
St Ann’s did have a reputation in the 1990s for high levels of crime, deprivation and some fairly serious gangsters but is now a mixture of the old St Ann’s terraced housing and those constructed in the 1960s and 1970s to replace much of it. It has to my knowledge retained a strong sense of local community and pride.
One thing that unites it and Sneinton is the demise of virtually every single pub, which are now either housing, knocked down completely, or some form of supermarket. The March Hare therefore stands as a beacon against this. I know two other pubs within 100 metres of it that have both been demolished.
I decided to go into the March Hare not for refreshment but to speak to the landlady to ask if I could leave my car in the adjacent pub car park overnight and return the following morning with assistance to mend my tyre.
As I walked into the pub, which is a classic mixture of bar, function room at the rear and games room, the small group of locals turned and looked at me in a sort of ‘American Werewolf in London’ moment.
Fortunately I had left my pin-striped suit at home and asked the lady behind the bar if I could please leave my car and she said ‘of course’. There was no hesitation; some banter then followed with the locals about paying a fee and buying them all a drink, which was all extremely good natured.
As I waited for my lift home three of the locals who were in the pub came out having had their drinks (this was early evening) and all of them expressed a view to me that they hoped I managed to sort things out and don’t worry, the car park is well lit and covered by CCTV.
The following morning I went in and thanked the licensee for her kindness in allowing me to park the car overnight and in the bar area was a group of men and women probably in their 70s (I felt quite young) who were there, I presume, for some sort of social occasion as food was being provided. There must have been about 30 of them.
Act of kindness
I thought to myself how important this pub is to these people and to the community in general and that it fulfilled a role no other community space, restaurant or café could do. Although it needed a lick of paint, its act of kindness to me as a stranger was unconditional.
I half expected a ‘sorry mate, customers only’ but this could not be further from the truth and long may this establishment continue to look after the local people in the area.
My second experience involves a pub called the Fox & Crown on Church Street in Basford, another post industrial area of Nottingham. This is a slightly nostalgic story for me personally because the pub is adjacent to the new Shipstone’s microbrewery.
For anyone from Nottingham born before the 1970s, Shipstone’s, or ‘Shipo’s’, was one of the then four local breweries in the county and owned many pubs particularly in Nottingham’s industrial heartland.
I had been playing indoor cricket and my friends and I repaired to the Fox & Crown for a beer afterwards.
I was taken aback by this pub, which was a classic one-room operation with a central bar but clean and with food available, football on the TV, a pool table and a great range of real ales, including at least two Shipstone’s beers.
I had to have a pint of Shipo’s for old times sake and because my grandfather had worked at the brewery for most of his working life. It was an excellent classic nutty English bitter, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
The pub was busy and there was a good atmosphere but there was no compromise on quality in terms of the provision of good beer and food and if this was my local, I would certainly feel very lucky.
I mention these two pubs as specific examples of the unique contribution they make to society in the United Kingdom, which cannot be replicated as far as I am aware by any other institution.
While pubs are, sadly, closing in post industrial cities, these two are continuing to buck the trend.
- James Anderson is partner at Poppleston Allen.
