Time, Gentlemen, Please?

 

OK - never mind the economy, the environment, the war in Ukraine or the UK's shoddy bloody government - I jest, but hear me out - there is a potential disaster in the making, lurking in the heart of The Black Country. On the tenth of last month, I wrote about the pub where Jane & I had our first date, over fifty years ago: The Crooked House at Himley, Staffordshire. A unique institution and social gathering place, still beloved of a local crowd of patrons.

It would seem that its current owners, Marston's, are putting it up for sale. It's worth noting that Marston's, once a proud independent brewer of fine ales, is now part of a large conglomerate, initiated by the Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries Company: itself once a good and honest collection of Midlands brewers, long since morphed into a corporatized brewco, and no longer brewing its own beers properly, let alone anyone else's. The upshot is that one of the jewels of our fast dying pub industry, and a building dear to our hearts, distanced even though we are by time and geography, is facing closure and an uncertain fate, after nearly two hundred years as a public house.

This unique and dearly-loved social institution is facing conversion into Christ-knows-what, at the hands of capitalists so out of tune with reality and history, that we can only hope that someone can step in and finance a buyout to save the place as it is. Crowdfunding springs to mind, as does trying to get Joe Bonamassa - who, though American, had (has?) a collaborative band project called Black Country Communion - on side, along with other notable Midlands-born rock musicians - who could help to preserve a tiny slice of Black Country history.

I believe this to be as important as any other cultural artefact, especially as it is part of the fabric of British working class history, so trivialized by the posh, self-entitled arbiters of culture: the history of the people who truly created The Industrial Revolution. Give the Parthenon frieze back to its rightful owners, the Greek people, and look to your own cultural roots: preserve at least something of the source of all our - the world's - wealth. Anyone got contacts that could help? Leave a comment if you have, and by the way, there's another like institution that needs saving, around here: The Douglas Arms in Bethesda...