Pressured by the pandemic, shortages, redevelopment and the burden of living through the crisis, pubs across the country are coming to an end en masse. We know five owners who recently had to quit smoking for good.
The smoking domain occupies the entire sidewalk. Inside, everyone screams and screams along with karaoke, hanging from each other on the dance floor. Every inch of the bar at the Lillie Langtry pub in Kilburn, north London, is filled with bloodless drinks when the last order bell rings, for the last time, around 11pm.
“There is nothing,” said Dr. Samuel Johnson in 1776, long before the advent of karaoke machines, “that produces as much happiness as a tavern or an inn. “Unlike being a guest at someone’s home, Johnson thought, in the pub “there’s a general absence of anxiety. . . The more noise you make, the more messes you make, the more things you ask, the more welcoming you are. “Hugging, singing, yelling, chatting, buying drinks and smoking cigarettes, suggests that his argument still holds.
The Lillie Langtry, which closed in September, is one of 19 pubs lost in England and Wales each week this year. Many have been an integral component of their communities for decades, if not many years, and their last owners have faced an unprecedented harsh business climate, facing gentrification and “regeneration,” a pandemic, emerging food and energy costs, and competitive habit through merchants.
From a nineteenth-century Birmingham pub with exquisite tiles to a thriving curry spot in Hampshire and that “drunken old man” in Kilburn, these are the stories of five closed pubs and the struggles their last owners had to fight to keep them open.
Top and further left: Regulars attend an evening of karaoke at the Lillie Langtry pub in Kilburn, London. It will close the next day. Top right: Margaret Percy, pub general manager
Alex Naewal The Pub
Abraham in the pub
Fowler and Canton in the pub
Above: final at Lillie Langtry
Michelle Ball, former landlady of Lillie Langtry
Youth outside the tavern