Village Pubs: Decline and Fall?

I grew up in a pub and spent much of my teenage years both sides of the counter. I like to think I know what a good community pub should be. More correctly, I like to think I know what a good landlord is. If you get that right you get a good pub. Our own local pubs keep going and I hasten to add that the following comments are not prompted by these valued community assets, but by my experiences generally.

Firstly, the landlord should be hospitable. So many landlords seem to think it is their mission in life to defy you to have a pleasant time. The customer needs a place to sit and have a quiet drink, not a table set out for dinner. On entering you should not be confronted by a wall of people drinking at the bar who are not being served but have claimed the counter as their own territory. It doesn’t have to be a silent temple but a choice is nice. Real beers and ciders at the right temperature should be on offer. A monopoly of gaseous drinks tells me that the management have no skills and might as well be running milk bar. You should not be poked in the eye by a thoughtless pool player who has forgotten that a cue has two ends. If there are others waiting I do not expect to be asked, ‘Whose next?’ in a sulking tone of voice, which is really saying, ‘Why are you here?’

It doesn’t have to be ‘refurbished’, because atmosphere probably ended up on the builders skip with a load of other treasures, like hand pumps. I don’t think it has to be entirely non-smoking either. A smoker’s bar, properly ventilated with access to a non smoking purchasing counter elsewhere, should have been allowed where space permitted. Food could be served and consumed elsewhere in such circumstances. Choice again. Before the ban I had stopped visiting pubs unless I could sit outside. Now, if I want to sit outside I have to get up wind of the smokers if I can. Otherwise I leave. OK, you might claim that non-smoking pubs will improve customers’ health. In that case stop people drinking as well if you really think that smoking and drinking will not take place elsewhere while the pubs die due to bureaucratic strangulation. Occasional live music is also a good idea if choice can be maintained.

Ideally, a pub should be somewhere where you can strike up a conversatio, not places where vows of silence apply. Old style country pubs with their big settles either side of an ingle nook used to encourage conversation, an art which modern society discourages in the interests of privacy. Granted, talking in railway carriages has never been a strong point for the British, but many pubs seem to be adopting this custom. Before pubs were ‘refurbished’ quiet assignations were catered for by the different types of bars. Saloon, Public, Private and Snug Bars, even a Jug and Bottle cubicle, could all exist side by side. Now vast acres of beer soaked carpeted hall seems to be the ideal for many brewers and landlords alike.

Here again, ‘landlord’ now seems an archaic word, with ‘manager’ seeming to be the brewers preference. What with higher alcohol taxes, the smoking ban and a lack of good landlords, it is surprising that the increasing rate of pub closures is not worse. Brewers seem intent on narrowing profit margins for their tenants and stoill expecting the pubs to thrive. Rather like supermarkets and farmers I suppose.
If pubs are to succeed in small communities they must first get the message I read outside a good pub on our recent travels, ‘the pub is the hub’. Ironically the notice board on the church next door displayed no name, denomination or services or vicar’s name. It did however have a formal notice stating that someone was applying to be buried there. If the closure rate continues the village pub will go the same way, and bad landlords will have played their part.