SAVING an ENDANGERED SPECIES: The PUB
NYT February 17th
LONDON — One by one, the
pubs are disappearing in Hampstead, a jewel-box village of cobbled lanes and
Georgian homes that has become one of this city’s most fashionable
neighborhoods. The Nags Head has become a realty office. The King of Bohemia is
now a clothing shop. The Hare & Hounds has been replaced with an apartment
building.
Changing economics and
shifting tastes have claimed roughly one out of every five pubs during the last
two decades in Britain, and things are growing
worse. Since the 2008 financial crisis, 7,000 have shut, leaving some small
communities confronting unthinkable: life without a “local,” as pubs are known.
And that has spurred the
government into action. New legislation is letting people petition to have a
pub designated an “asset of community value,” a status that provides a degree
of protection from demolition and helps community groups buy pubs themselves,
rather than seeing them get snatched up by real estate developers eager to
convert them for other uses or tear them down. Since the Ivy House, a beloved
local in south London, became the first to receive the designation last year,
roughly 300 others have followed suit.
“The pub, we like to
think, is relatively internationally unique, it’s a very traditional thing,”
said Brandon Lewis, the Conservative member of Parliament who is the Community
Pubs Minister, an office that underscores the special place pubs occupy in
British life. “In many communities they are really important, not just because
it’s where people come together, but it will be the focal point for
fund-raising for the community, for the local football club, for the dance
class, for the moms’ coffee morning.”
Still, the traditional
pub is being squeezed as never before, even after George Osborne, chancellor of
the Exchequer, reversed course last March and reduced the tax paid on every
pint of beer, by a penny. Antismoking laws are keeping smokers away. Cut-price
beer for sale at supermarkets is eating into business. In London, the upward
spiral of real estate prices has made pubs attractive targets for developers.
And then there is a
cultural shift on this isle of bitter, porter and stout: People in Britain are
drinking about 23 percent less beer than a decade ago, according to the British
Beer and Pub Association. Pubs have been trying to take up the slack with other
beverages and expanded food menus.
On another level,
Britain’s pub trouble is also an echo of the deregulatory fervor of Margaret
Thatcher. In the 1980s, her Conservative government broke up the
near monopoly that brewers held over pubs. But the breweries were replaced by
large, independent companies that have since gobbled up a little over half of
the nation’s pubs. These “pubcos” often own the land, determine what beer pubs
can sell and can charge high rents. Some amassed their holdings by going into
debt and are now selling to the highest bidder to capitalize on their real
estate. A proposed parliamentary motion last
month decried the profit margins of one pubco, Punch Taverns, calling them
“wholly unacceptable.”
“Large pub companies own
a lot of property, and there’s a temptation to sell some of those properties
off for a quick monetary gain,” said Neil Walker of the Campaign for Real Ale,
an advocacy group. Many pubs have been turned into residences or supermarkets,
he said.
One battleground here in
Hampstead is at the Old White Bear. A handsome, two-chimney building of red
brick, the Bear has occupied its spot on Well Road for three centuries. Peter
O’Toole, it is said, had to be carried out occasionally in his younger, wilder
days. Elizabeth Taylor, who was born in Hampstead, and Richard Burton, who
owned a home here, were also visitors, patrons say. Recent guests are said to
include Boy George and Liam Gallagher.
But after the Old White
Bear was bought by a group of developers through a company on the Isle of Man,
2,000 people signed a petition to save the pub. The Bear has been declared an
asset of community value, and the local council has so far refused permission
to turn it into a six-bedroom house. Even so, the pub closed on Feb. 2. With
the developers determined to fight, the Bear’s future is uncertain.
Guy Wingate, a longtime
patron, pointed to Hampstead’s fallen locals. While the village has other pubs,
the Old White Bear, he said, had become the center of his community.
“You rip the heart out of
that, and we’re either all going to wander the streets like zombies or stay
indoors and not see each other ever again,” Mr. Wingate said over coffee at
Cafe Rouge, which used to be the Bird in Hand.
The last night of the Old
White Bear, a patron was carried in on the shoulders of six staff members. A
bartender mimicked an air raid siren. A Husky dozed on the floor. There were
speeches and toasts. Jennie Smith, smoking outside, said that she and another
regular — her chocolate Labrador, Bentley — were devastated. Bentley had
stopped by earlier for a bit of roast beef. As the crowd spilled through the
rooms, another patron rose to recite an ode to the Old White Bear.
“Let’s be brave, let’s be
bold, let’s believe in this White Bear of old,” he said. “Raise a glass and
say, we close tonight, to return another day.”
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