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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| Message: | 6/6 |
| Date and time: | 05/09/2010 at 14:44:45 |
| Sender: | Paul Shearsmith |
| When I first came to London in 1972 I used to go to a bar in Southwark called Becky's dive bar. Long gone. The woman who ran the bar dressed in 30's 40's clothes and played big band music on a record player. There were old arm chairs and empty barrels to sit on. She sold Thwaites' beer straight from the barrel along with other drinks. She also sold sausages from a tray and you could tell how many had been sold by the indentations in the fat. | |
| Message: | 5/6 |
| Date and time: | 25/07/2010 at 15:27:22 |
| Sender: | Paul Shearsmith |
| When I first came to London in 1972 I used to go to a bar in Southwark called Becky's dive bar. Long gone. | |
| Message: | 4/6 |
| Date and time: | 28/08/2009 at 00:35:36 |
| Sender: | Simon |
| Does anyone remember the John Bull in Chiswick, a pub rock venue that had regulsr gigs around the mid 70s to the earky 80s. I used to see Paul Young's Streetband, The Jags, and a regular band there was The Press, an out and out high energy rnb band with a great frontman, I often wonder what became of them, they deserved to have been a big success. | |
| Message: | 3/6 |
| Date and time: | 10/04/2009 at 14:16:45 |
| Sender: | northernman |
| I remember being facinated by finches on portobello road late sixties,full of hippies and very vibrant area!though i was to young to drink! | |
| Message: | 2/6 |
| Date and time: | 03/01/2009 at 22:53:36 |
| Sender: | Alan Wylie |
| 'The Kings Head', with the 'Dive Bar' downstairs, a sadly lost part of China Town, on the corner of Gerrard street and Newport Place. I used to love sitting in this pub listening to all the banter between the hilarious camp gay owners and the punters, a great mixture of Sohoites and prostitutes. It is now another chinese restaurant. | |
| Message: | 1/6 |
| Date and time: | 02/04/2008 at 14:19:14 |
| Sender: | clw666 |
| chelsea drugstore on kings road was pub with music. Birds nest also in kings road, I think, was a disco with the famous 'chicken in a basket' (designed to comply with discos who had late licences IF they served food). | |
