Pubs past

London pubs we've lost

The Company Stores, Camden, RIP

As the chain dominates the high street little nuggets of local history are discarded. We start losing a sense of time, place and context as it is subsumed under corporate glitz.

I was thinking this as I was in Camden Town noting that the old Company Stores pub in Parkway has after several dismal interim reinventions has given up being a pub or bar and has become a Masala Zone restaurant. Now I have nothing against Masala Zone and as I have never been to one I can�t comment. Rumour has it they�re not bad. The pubs of Camden, though, are particularly important being a product of the building of canal and railway and the vast influx of labour that came into the area.

Pub names that mean something

The pubs served the Irish workers, the Dublin Castle; the Scottish, the Edinburgh Castle; the English, the Devonshire Castle; and the Welsh with the Pembroke Castle, alas no more. There was also a Company Store where the labourers could buy beer amongst other things hence the pub�s name.

It was a comfortable but undistinguished pub that then had the misfortune to be renamed the Rat and Parrot. Yes, I too always find the juxtaposition of pissed as a rat and sick as a parrot an enticing allure to drink. Not surprisingly it haemorrhaged punters and was reinvented yet again as The Camden Head, a totally bogus name. This too has now closed and another upmarket chain opens. Is it just me or are the upmarket chains starting to really piss you off with their pretence at exclusivity but their corporate uniform reality. Affluent and bohemian is just another branding exercise and real idiosyncrasy is demolished. Have a good festive season. Bah, bloody, humbug!

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