Hard times for pubs

click photo to enlarge

The smoking ban, increased taxes on alcohol, cheap beer, wine and spirits in supermarkets, rapacious "pubcos" and the recession. In the past few years pubs and their tenants and owners have had a lot to deal with. Small wonder that wherever you go in the UK you see closed premises, "for sale" signs or advertisements for people to run pubs. As a career the management of a public house looks like a one way street to bankruptcy or, at best, penury.

I came across the pub shown in today's photographs on a recent visit to Newark in Nottinghamshire. Ye Olde Market on Boar Lane had clearly succumbed to the belt-tightening that has affected much of the country. But, to lessen the impact of a derelict premises on the surounding shops and streets suitable pictures/window boarding had been commissioned, each advertising a local business. As I studied the images and the building I couldn't help but notice the unwitting commentary on the present-day difficulties of runnning a successful pub that the juxtaposition of the early twentieth century traffic sign and the picture offered. It was either that or a mischievously contrived pairing by an advocate of the temperance movement. It seemed good enough for a picture.

photographs and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 32mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Pubs, hotels and vanishing customers

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Anyone who lives in England or who visits on a regular basis can't help but notice the decline of the English pub. At the end of last year they were closing at a rate of 25 per week as large pub operators and privately-run businesses decided there was over-capacity and that many establishments were unprofitable and never going to be able to produce a profit. A combination of cheaper alcohol from supermarkets, the ban on smoking in buildings open to the public, the tightening of everyone's belt following the banking crash and the increased competition for discretionary spending has resulted in many closures over the past few years. Boarded up buildings can be seen in villages, towns  and cities across the country. This is nothing new of course. A hundred and more years ago even the smallest English village had a pub, and often not one but two, three or more. That was a time when beer was safer to drink than"Adam's ale" i.e. water. Most of these didn't survive the changing circumstances of the twentieth century. What is different about today's closures is the scale and the short period of time over which they are happening.

The down-turn in the fortunes of the pub has been mirrored, perhaps to a lesser extent, by hotels. The rise of mass foreign holidays in the 1960s on the back of increasing incomes and cheaper air fares made a big dent in the custom that English hotels received, and over subsequent decades this only increased. So this sector of the "hospitality industry" has suffered too. The recent economic downturn has offered some relief with more people indulging in "staycations", and the swapping of a stay in a country hotel, travel lodge or seaside resort for a fortnight in Spain, the Dominican Republic or Thailand. But hotels also have a long history of closures, with many buildings being unable to adapt (or be adapted) to modern needs and standards. I wonder if that was the fate of the Stamford Hotel in Stamford, Lincolnshire. This large building, begun in 1810 and completed fifteen or twenty years later after a period of inactivity, looks more like a Georgian Assembly Rooms with its giant order of Corinthian columns in antis. Its scale looks incongruous on narrow St Mary's Street and today it is subdivided and occupied by a number of small businesses. Looking at this Francis Frith postcard it appears that it was still functioning as a hotel in 1922. When did it stop trading I wonder? On a recent day in Stamford I passed through the building, taking this photograph of its fine cantilevered stone staircase that is lit by windows and a glass-topped lantern above.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm
 F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/50 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The sign of The Black Swan

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The traditional English pub sign is a joy. It usually comprises an oil painting that illustrates the name of the pub. This hangs from a projecting bracket on the side of the building or on a purpose-built stand. Thus, The Red Lion may have an heraldic lion - rampant, passant, reguardant, rarely couchant - or a shield with the lion as the charge on it. One of the many pubs called The Plough will, in all probability, have a ploughman holding the said implement as he follows his horse. The King's Head will have just that, the particular monarch being chosen either with regard to the date of the building of the pub, or on the whim of the brewery, the landlord or the sign painter. And, because there are so many different pub names, the variety of images on the signs is enormous.

But, in recent years, the insidious growth of corporatism, "branding" and pub designers has led to something of a decline in the number of traditional pub signs. They are still in the great majority, but I notice more and more "modern" signs appearing. These often have a limited palette - usually two colours - and have a simple motif replacing the detail of the traditional sign. Many are conceived in the spirit of a corporate logo rather than a centuries old artefact. And, unlike the older model, the newer ones date very quickly and are usually replaced with something equally inept. A particularly bad example I once saw was on a pub called The Crossed Keys, a common name said to derive from the symbol of St Peter, or perhaps the archbishopric of York. The pub designers had painted black keys - with a trendy ragged outline - on a khaki coloured background. It wasn't eye-catching and the name wasn't spelled out in full: it didn't even warrant a glance, and certainly wasn't of the quality that invites the onlooker to admire the painter's art and reflect on how the establishment's name has been interpreted compared with others you've seen. And, regrettably that's true of most "modern" pub signs.

However, today, whilst on a shopping expedition in Spalding, Lincolnshire, I noticed this modern sign that I quite like. Admittedly it wouldn't work so well on a cloudy day, but the lights on each side of it may well throw interesting shadows at night. I chose a black and white conversion to accentuate its graphic qualities.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 9.3mm (44mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Self-portrait in Green Bricks

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"If red houses are made out of red bricks, blue houses are made out of blue bricks, and yellow houses are made out of yellow bricks, what are green houses made out of?
from "1001 Jokes for Kids"
(answer below*)

Many Victorians had the feeling that they were living in an age, the like of which, the world hadn't seen before. It was a technological age, an age of new industries, burgeoning cities, mass transport, migration, population growth, exploration and change. Architects were asked to rise to the challenge of designing buildings that had never been needed before. What should a railway station look like? Or a hospital? Or how about an urban school, a museum, or a cotton mill? And with these new buildings came new construction techniques and new materials. Cast iron, steel, fire-proof floors, large areas of glazing, terracotta mouldings, and glazed bricks were all employed to create the new structures.

I came across some fine Victorian glazed brickwork yesterday when I was in Kingston upon Hull, a city and port on the north bank of the River Humber in eastern England. I lived there for several years so I know it reasonably well. As I walked around the marina that has been formed out of the former Humber Dock I passed what I remember as the "Humber Dock Tavern" but is now called "Green Bricks". This changing of pubs' names to suit the fashion of the day is not something of which I approve: old names carry part of the history of an area and shouldn't be expunged on a whim. The best I can say about this example is that the new title at least has a certain logic to it. The Victorians liked to use glazed bricks to face pubs, and green was especially popular, though burgundy, red, blue, yellow and a few other colours can be found in most big cities. Here the elevation also has tiled panels with swags and arabesques, as well as crude capitals on glazed "columns." One of the virtues of glazed bricks is they last remarkably well, providing a smart, easily cleaned, low-maintenance finish that still looks good over a hundred years later: they should be used more today. I've seen a few examples from the late twentieth century - here's some Southwark flats - , and I've posted another image of a pub (now a hotel) with a tiled facade that I saw in Windsor.

My reason for snapping this pub elevation was not only the glazed bricks, but the reflection of the sunlit marina in the window. It was, I thought, another opportunity to add to my ongoing theme of reflected self-portraits!

*Answer: "Glass!"
That joke is only funny if you know that in the UK glasshouses, that is to say the glass horticultural buildings used for growing tomatoes, lettuces, cucumbers, etc., are more commonly known as greenhouses. And, even if you do know that it still isn't very funny!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 22mm (44mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On