Four years on, Phil Mellows assesses the impact of the Covid lockdown on our local watering holes.
As I write, the fourth anniversary of the pandemic lockdown is looming. Cast your mind back to 23 March 2020 and the Prime Minister’s clownish face on our television screen improbably telling us to stay at home. Indefinitely. There were, arguably, more serious consequences, but the realisation that all our pubs were going to have to close somehow summed up the enormity of the situation.
For the previous week, it’s true, we had been winding down. People were already following the advice to cease non-essential contact. Was the pub essential or not, though? It was only the stark reality of lockdown, and what seemed like the prospect of losing our pubs for good, that forced us to answer that question.
We missed pubs more than we imagined. Their absence confirmed their vital role as a place where people come together and go about that business of being human.
July 4, reopening day, marked a hesitant, nervous, return to ‘normality’. The promised parties never materialised. The restrictions prevented that. And we were still a little scared. But it’s interesting to look back and see how far we’ve come. What’s been lost – and what’s been gained.
The big casualties in Newham have been two of the Borough’s three Wetherspoons, part of a post-pandemic sale package. The Miller’s Well in East Ham has now been reopened by the people at the Overdraft Tavern in the High Street. Hudson’s Bay in Forest Gate is permanently gone. Word is it’s being converted into an Islamic Centre, so at least it’s retaining a social role.
In contrast, the highlight of the past few years was the reopening of the Boleyn Tavern in the summer of 2021, a splendid restoration by Remarkable Pubs with plenty of good beer on the bar. The job cost them £1.5m, which showed considerable confidence that people would come back.
Another medium-sized company, Portobello Brewery, took over the Forest Tavern opposite Forest Gate Station, and on a smaller scale, Canning Town’s Husk Brewing opened a new taproom last year and is now brewing again.
There should be more, but this is all good news, and more solid evidence that the death of the pub has been wildly exaggerated.
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