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The Developer Who Demolished This Historic Pub Has to Rebuild the Entire Thing

In a triumph for Britain’s ailing pub industry, a London property developer who demolished a Victorian pub without permission is being forced to rebuild the entire thing.
Phoebe Hurst
London, GB
Photo via Flickr user Ewan Munro

British pubs are a dying breed. Changing drinking tastes and the escalating overheads that plague independent landlords mean that an estimated 29 pubs are closed in the UK every week. Nowadays, the only people who make regular visits to their local, let alone spend enough time there to develop cross-generational feuds with fellow patrons, are characters on Coronation Street.

While the frontages of derelict Red Lions and King's Heads plague high streets across the country, in London, that once loved watering hole isn't just a symbol of a bygone drinking era, it's valuable real estate.

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Earlier this year, an 18th century pub in the capital was bought by a property company for £27 million and in Leyton, East London, the former Oliver Twist pub has been converted into nine flats, the cheapest of which sold for £250,000.

With this in mind, it's pretty satisfying to hear that the property developer who demolished a Victorian pub in South London without permission is being forced to rebuild the entire thing.

READ MORE: Glasgow's 'Hard Men' Have Nowhere Left to Drink

In May this year, Udhyam Amin demolished the Alchemist, a Battersea pub that had been open for more than 100 years before closing in 2013. The developer says his plan was to extend the building into a block of flats, but ended up pulling the entire thing down after it became structurally unsound. Right.

Sensing that this all sounded a little too convenient for Amin, Wandsworth Council rejected his application for retrospective planning permission, saying that the developer was attempting to get around the enforcement action that comes from recklessly tearing down buildings of significant historical interest.

The council's planning chairman Sarah McDermott explained that the "loss of such an interesting and important local landmark was judged to be against the public interest" and that in the council's view, "the demolition was a very serious breach of planning rules which can only be put right by the complete rebuilding and reconstruction of this important community asset, using the same materials and to the same architectural design."

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Cue Amin and his bulldozer-driving cohort scrambling around to find 18th century encaustic tile flourishes.

The council's strong line on rebuilding the pub, which was in a conservation area, echoes the comments of Christopher Costelloe, director of The Victorian Society. In a statement on the charity's website last week, he said: "This handsome Victorian pub made a positive contribution to the local area for around 150 years—its sudden demolition was illegal and deprived the local community of a chance to comment on the plans."

It's not the first time property developers have unleashed the demolition gear on unsuspecting Victorian drinking monuments. The Carlton Tavern in Kilburn, North West London was pulled down in April after the developers applied to the local council for permission to knock the pub down and build a block of flats in its place. Their application was refused but it didn't stop them bringing in the bulldozers.

READ MORE: British People Would Rather Get Drunk at Home Than the Pub

As London's property prices continue to grow and British drinking habits edge further away from community-centred drinking spots, the fate of pubs like the Alchemist and Carlton seems set to repeat.

It's not all bad news, though. Chefs like Tom Harris and Jon Rotheram of The Marksman in East London are working to revive British pub fare without erring into clumsy "gastropub" territory and younger drinkers are chipping away at the gender divide traditionally found in the brewing industry.

Of course, none of that will bring back the history embedded in the walls of the Alchemist.