Because of course they would.
"What was the point of us demolishing the place if we're going to be reconstructing it?"
The owners have said they want to rebuild in a different location. This has not been agreed.
And I hope it never is. They'd have a double win - using the original site to build flats and getting planning permission somewhere else to rebuild the pub, probably somewhere slightly easier to access thereby making the pub a more profitable enterprise, since modern planning would mean it would need excellent access and car parking etc which (I am presuming because I don't know the old one in person) the original pub might have lacked.
Seem to recall they have land that is used for quarrying? Perhaps that is the reason for wanting it rebuilt elsewhere. Although I am appalled by the events leading up to and including the demolition it should be remembered that the pub was in an isolated location and no longer financially viable. If only some of those 35,000 had spent more of their money in there then none of this would have happened.
The pub might not have been financially viable any longer but the building was still of historic value. Maybe the owners could have sold it for conversion to a house, rather than 'whoops' it catching fire so they could build flats there? It's not so much the pubbiness, it's the fact that it was a noteworthy building that ought to have been preserved.
True, perhaps it was the mineral rights all along
Precisely.
According to a report in the Indie, 2 pubs are closing every day. A combination of high running costs & reduced footfall from a] covid a while back & b] the price of booze & less disposable income due to cost of living increase etc.
That's the problem. What exactly do you do with an empty pub in a rural location that is clearly not financially viable? A change of use sympathetic to the style of the building is the only viable solution. Only the same with what become dilapidated old mansions which are allowed to be refurbed into monstrocities internally if not listed.(ok not a change of use but still).
A lot of villages now have clubs that are usually associated with sport (eg football or cricket) and offer cheaper drinks than pubs and all the sport on big screen tv etc. They seem to have replaced the local pub in being a community venue and host community events with barbecues etc. Often these existed before the local pub closed and have then filled the void. It is just a shame as a village feels so empty with a a pub and the service they provide for passers-by such as walkers and motorists. But then even my local no-frills boozer around the corner is charging £4.50 for pint of draught cider during a cost of living crisis and the same drink being available in the supermarket for a third of the price,
Many of the villages out here are actual, real villages, so population of around 150, no clubs, no groups to use the pubs. Many are barely a closed pub and a handful of houses. In the old days when everyone drank and then drove home they could keep going. Then the whole 'don't drink and drive' very properly took off, so the pubs lost any custom that wasn't local - it's too far to walk along country lanes in the dark just for a pint. So many turned into 'foodie' places, great in the holiday season but locals won't pay £100 for a meal, and then Covid finished them off, when everyone discovered it was cheaper to drink at home. It's all very sad and a way of life gone.
Not fussy about ID either! The Rising Sun at Umberleigh survives by dint of owning the fishing rights to a stretch of the River Taw and offering food and accommodation to fishermen (and women)
Sadly, there are many factors in the success or failure in the pub trade.
I think we need to be honest and accept that back in the 1970s and 1980s there were a huge number of rubbish boozers that relied on a dwindling elderly local crowd for whom going to the pub was every night was second nature and thus made no effort to up their game. I can certainly remember a few in Barnstaple in the mid-80s, including one with an openly racist landlord that would refuse to serve non-Whites and had BNP/NF paraphernalia on the walls. Their eventual closure was not widely mourned...
Thirsk has a lower socio-economic status amid the wealthy villages and towns up here. The property is cheaper than in many other places. So the demographic there is of the elderly and the disenfranchised (although it does have its posh areas too and the railway line passing through means that commuting is a possibility). So, in a way, it's still set back in the '80s where people go to the pub for a 'good time'.
