Context 165 - August 2020

C O N T E X T 1 6 5 : A U G U S T 2 0 2 0 25 Food and drink GEOFF BRANDWOOD The changing face of the English pub The coronavirus pandemic will certainly have an impact on the future of the UK’s pubs, but a look at the past 60 years shows that adapting to changing times is what pubs have done well. Suppose you had just been down to your local for a drink with your friends back in 1960 and, Rip Van Winkle-wise, fallen asleep, and reawakened to find yourself in 2020. Another trip to the pub to restore equilibrium seems a good idea – but how familiar will everything be, or how different? First of all, your local may well have dis- appeared since the UK’s pub numbers have declined by around 40 per cent since the 1960s. The decline has been particularly acute in this century, with numbers falling by some 14,000 since 2000 as changing social habits, financial crises, the smoking ban and the enhanced value of premises for alternative uses have all taken their punitive toll.There are now roughly 47,000 of them (and perhaps at many less post-Covid). Your local may have been demolished and the site built upon; perhaps converted to flats, a mini-market or a car park. If your pub does survive, you probably will not get a clue as to who owns it: most pubs now have little or no corporate branding. Under the Beer Orders of 1989, brewers were forced to divest themselves of tied houses in excess of 2,000 and they sold off their estates to what are in effect property companies, commonly referred to as ‘pubcos’. Ironically, the largest of these, Stonegate, owns nearly 5,000: in other words, one in 10, a vastly higher proportion than any major brewer ever had. Once-familiar insignia have largely gone, although you might spot some vestigial advertising for some long-lost brewery. Social and physical changes In 1960 the typical pub had a greater sense of community focus than it does today. This was especially so in industrial areas, where workers would repair to the pub in droves after a day in the factory or down the pit. By 2020 A pub no more: the Parkfield, Eastbourne, East Sussex, built in the 1950s, is now a Co-op supermarket (Photo: Michael Schouten) Vestigial branding from the long-gone London brewers Mann, Crossman and Paulin at the Griffin, Claygate, Surrey, of about 1930. Like most pubs today it is owned by a pubco and no longer has any corporate identity (Photo: Geoff Brandwood)