Uncertain Times

Purple haze

As befitting my approaching status as an Official Old Man, I remember the Old Days here in Preston.  2013 to be exact, and it's longer ago than you think.  Back then, you would struggle to get a decent pint in the town (yes, it's still town to me). Perhaps the Old Black Bull would have something reasonable on, if you could get the attention of miserable old Stan to serve you.  But apart from that, it was either the Spoons Lottery at the Grey Friar, or a 20 minute trek down Fishergate Hill to The Continental.  So I used to go to Lancaster, which had a better offering.

On my trips to Lancaster on the 40/41 bus, I passed a place called The Moorbrook and it was not in good shape.  Owned by Thwaites at the time, said brewery preferred to invest in the (now closed) Lamb & Packet and the (now closed) New Welcome. "Oh look," I thought as my bus trundled up North Road "has The Moorbrook fallen down yet?"

Around this time, Thwaites were seeing a limited future for town centre pubs and were flogging them off.  The Moorbrook was deemed surplus to requirements and provisionally sold to a student housing company.  But, and here's where the story really begins, said company did not come up with the cash, so Thwaites passed it on to the second highest bidder, who happened to be the mother of Jeremy Rowlands, owner of the Continental.  After a bit of basic refurb, they installed erstwhile Conti employee Richard Fisher-Godwin as manager.

If you've ever been to The Moorbrook, you'll know its main problem as a pub is its location.  The sole survivor of a Victorian terrace, it's on the side of of a Y-junction, surrounded by sketchy-to-cross roads and large retail units,  There's very little chance a bog-standard pub with a bog standard drink selection would survive long there, and indeed the vast majority of pubs in the area have closed down in the last 30 years.  Luckily, at this time the whole "craft beer" thing was taking off.  Rich duly installed microbrewed cask ales on the pump, and probably Preston's first ever "craft keg" selection on the taps.  It duly opened in May 2014, to so much local publicity that even I went there for the opening.

Preston's beer scene since has pretty much followed where The Moorbrook led off.  The town has plenty of choice these days.  Even the Spoons upped its game.  The Moorbrook however, given said location has had to keep on offering more and more in an increasingly costly and crowded market.  Pizzas, a sheltered beer garden, football away-day trips, food home deliveries, constant menu innovations and even painting the frontage purple to stand out better.  Whereas a town centre pub like The Black Horse can rely on passing trade, The Moorbrook has to be a "destination".

I assume keeping all these balls in the air must get exhausting after a decade or so, and a couple of days ago Rich announced he was moving on from The Moorbrook in January.  As such, the future of the pub is up in the air.  While it's not likely to be targeted for the student housing market this time (numerous blocks have been built in the area in the past few years), finding someone with the required skillset to run such a pub will be a challenge.  They'll need someone with knowledge of drinks, food, management AND promotional skills.

The Moorbrook has an excellent reputation in the town and with the locals. As a pub, it's pleasingly "non-corporate", but hasn't overdone the decor to the point of tweeness like is seen with a lot of independent free houses.  But you do wonder what might happen if someone with a different vision to Richard Fisher-Godwin takes over.

You Can't Get There From Here

Experiences

 Was it ever going to end any other way?  One of the major bugbears of anyone travelling to a major event is "Why are they all in London?  It's a long way from me!" (of course, the rail network is specifically designed for no other reason than to get from Anywhere to London quickly).  CAMRA have found out why the big stuff happens in London.  In moving the Great British Beer Festival to the NEC in Birmingham, they turned a moderately unprofitable event into a six-figure loss-maker.  And based on the attendance figures, it will likely be the last of its kind.

That sound you're hearing right now is the CAMRA National Executive tightening its belt.  The £320k shortfall at the GBBF has no doubt resulted in it being pulled a few more notches than otherwise intended at the start of this financial year.  The savings targets are what you'd expect - moving printed matter to digital, and vague talk of "being leaner", "streamlining" and ending "nice to haves".

If we're being honest here, the financial climate in the UK has not been great for a long time, so it's surprising CAMRA hasn't seen this looming over the horizon for a while.  Discretionary spending is down, and prices in pubs have only been going up.  But CAMRA's main enemy is simply the passing of time.

CAMRA's membership, despite the impression you'd get from the literature and posters, has skewed to the elderly for some considerable time.  I've heard I'm in the youngest 20% of members - and I'm 50 in three months.  There's always been churn as the older members, well, die off.  The problem in recent years is they're not being replaced.  The org's traditional recruitment method was to get people into beer festivals and sign them up to a direct debit (a practice frowned upon by even the rapacious Street Fundraising companies, but I'll let that slide for now), but as Beer Fest numbers decline, so do the potential new members.

Average cask ale drinkers

The "Young People" (by which I mean the under-40s) CAMRA want to attract rarely go to things like Beer Fests.  They have a reputation as being infested with middle-aged, drunken, bigoted and sexist dinosaurs.  If the Millennials drink at all, it's either at home or quiet times where they can use their phones in a corner.  And as for CAMRA's offer?  If you become one of the desperately-needed "active volunteers", the activities offered are a combination of an OAP's charabanc and a 70s trade union branch meeting.  As a result, CAMRA will likely be moribund within the next decade.

I did joke on X yesterday that maybe CAMRA could make up the losses by sending membership forms to the UK's retirement homes and sheltered housing schemes.  But on consideration, I think these are the only people who would seriously consider joining now.

Every Dog Has Its Day

I may as well admit it now.  BrewDog and I have history. This blog was making fun of them long before it was fashionable.  Back in the day, 12 years ago amazingly enough, those plucky young upstarts from Ellon were shaking up the craft brewing scene with stunts and other assorted attention-grabbing publicity.  I'd love to be able to say I saw straight through them from the very beginning.  But I just thought they were ridiculous and needed making fun of.  And the hipster posturing with over-hopped beer and distressed typefaces was a trout in a teacup as far as targets went in 2013.

The actual beer BrewDog made at the time was still reasonably ok as far as I recall.  I ordered a few from the website (navingating past the "opportunity" to become an Equity Punk, of course) and even visited their now soon to be closed bar in Camden.  It was echoey and expensive, but there was clearly a market for such things back then.  There was a formula behind it, clearly, but it seemed reasonably innocent and authentic.

2017 was, I think, the point when questions started to be asked.  BrewDog's founders James Watt and Martin Dickie sold a large chunk of the company to private equity house, TSG Consumer Partners.  At that point, people began to wonder it BrewDog was as "punk" as it claimed to be.  It seems laughable in retrospect, really, as Watt and Dickie were clearly on the same startup/grow/sell out path as all those other "upstart" businesses like Innocent Smoothies and Teapigs.  The difference being was that craft beer is seen as a "community" and sellouts are seen as a "betrayal".  It's likely that BrewDog never came back from this.

Ex-fishing boat captain and friend, yesterday

A few years of misfired publicity, a highly critical BBC documentary, and the questionable antics of James Watt himself later, BrewDog as a brewer and bar owner is barely mentioned now in what remains of the "beer communication industry".  Punk IPA is now a commodity product sold in Wetherspoons and Tesco.  The bars are much the same as they were in 2013, with their now dated menus and industrial design aesthetic.  James Watt is virtually a pariah due to his many "sins" both serious and minor - being one of many people using "neurodiversity" as an excuse for dubious behaviour.  And the company itself?  The FT has revealed that BrewDog is loss-making, debt-ridden and its shares virtually worthless.

Is BrewDog doomed?  Hard to say.  They've announced closures of 10 bars, but service businesses both good and bad close branches all the time.  It could become yet another piece of corporate infrasructure to be sold off either whole or piece-by-piece, or it could just rumble on as a zombie business for a few more years.  Either way, Jimmy has made his pile and is no doubt looking to get out and spend more time with his Made In Chelsea wife and banal YouTube channel.

What I think will doom BrewDog in the end is the fact the world has moved on and it hasn't.  It's just not fashionable any more.  Every dog has its day, and this dog has had it.

Compulsory Post This Year At The Final Opportunity

The Future

 

It's not been the best of years, has it?

Remember ten years ago?  Beer wasn't everywhere then, but it was spreading.  New micropubs opening at those empty units in town, new breweries opening in the nearby industrial estate.  Even hitherto dull locals were expanding their ranges to get a piece of the beer geek pie.


Like all new things, though, it eventually became old.  The peak had passed by the end of 2018 and the scene was slowly declining until we hit March 2020.  And we know what happened then.

After we emerged, blinking, into the streets where we'd barely set foot for a year, it was found that it wasn't what we thought it was.  No, there wasn't an enormous market for microbrewed craft beer of uncertain quality.  No, not everyone wanted to sit on hard stools in draughty, haphazardly constructed bars.  And no, there wasn't any money in it unless you were (a) lucky and (b) flogged yourself to death.

Halfway throught the third decade of the 21st century, a lot of people are now scrabbling.  Licenced premises are closing by the score every month and breweries and distros are retrenching. Beer is supposed to be fun, and fun is nowhere to be found these days.  Taking the piss seems, well, a bit harsh.

Is there any hope? Dunno about you, but I ain't seeing it.  Easy for me, stood at the bar of the Black Horse with 10 cask lines to choose from, but is that really representative of the beer and pub scene in 2025?  I doubt it.  If things will ever get better, they will surely have to get worse first.

Paradise Garden

Timbo's Dream

One thing you rarely encounter in a tightly-packed and traffic-addled city centre like Preston's is a pub with a proper beer garden.  All the pubs are either built into the streets with minimal space out back, or they're micros with only enough room for a delivery van at the rear.  The most you're likely to get is a poky, concreted area either out front or behind.  So you'd think sticking a few extra seats outside the Greyfriar, one of Preston's two Wetherspoons (see above) wouldn't be such a big deal.  But as usual, Preston's esteemed town planners are having none of it.

Used during good weather, honest

This is what the area in question presently looks like.  One of the main objections to Wetherspoon's plan is that the only "greenery" in that part of the area is being removed to make room for more tables and chairs.  At the moment, it can accommodate 25-30 people, but this would have been bumped up to 78 with the removal of these (somewhat worse for wear) raised planters.  The planners deem this as unacceptable as it will have an "unacceptable impact" on the surroundings.  And what are the 'surroundings' around here like?  Well...

Nice tiles on Old Black Bull. Shame about the beer

This is the view directly in front.  Don't mind the barriers, as I'm sure they'll be gone soon when the County Council finally finish the latest updates to the ring road.  Here you can see a Premier Inn and the old Public Hall.  If you look just round the corner on the right, you get an excellent view of a long-vacant Office Outlet that's peeling off 40 years worth of paint jobs.  Oh, and by the digger is where a 150-year old sycamore tree used to be before it was unceremoniously chopped last year to make way for more paving. So much for "greenery". 

Jobcentre Plus located directly behind Spoons.
Saves time, I guess.

Let's look to the left.  Here we see the road heading up to the famous Bus Station.  Across the street is a small park which can look ok on sunny summer days (greenery!).  But all you can see here otherwise is unprepossessing 60s grey concrete office buildings.  The large one in the centre is Limehouse, a recent conversion to residential city living.  Unseen behind that is a recently flattened area (formerly a car park and covered market) which will soon house a chain cinema, some chain restaurants and, as revealed this week - a chain bar. We are, apparently, looking forward to this.

The other side of the traditional Preston 'money shot'
up Friargate towards the Harris

To the right of this is the Friargate side of the town's mall - the St. George's Centre.  This was built in the 1990s and is presently completely vacant - including a Marie Celeste-like branch of Patisserie Valerie which has all the tables, seats, cleaning sprays and sugar sachets still in situ despite being closed since 2020.  This whole arcade was going to become a selection of bistros with outdoor dining and plants and stuff providing excellent views of Preston's branch of Wilko, but fell through due to COVID19. Future plans are unknown.

As you may have gathered, I am somewhat sceptical about the reasons given by the planners for disallowing this outdoor Spoons seating.  Plants removed?  Plenty of trees in view here that are more impressive than the few bushes that were due to be binned.  Street clutter from the new permanent fencing?  Well, Friargate is already a sea of A-boards from all the eating and drinking establishments at this end of the road ready to catch out the unwary and/or drunk.  Not that I know anything about that, of course.

I suspect it's rather more that the planners want to improve, indeed gentrify, this end of Friargate leading as it does to all the expensive new university buildings in Adelphi.  And what could be less "improving" than 78 pub punters sat outside a Wetherspoons smoking and drinking cheap lager?  Probably best to shunt those kind of people back to their normal habitat at Hogarths on Church Street or The Golden Cross on Lancaster Road.

We'll see what happens when all those barriers are removed from the road and that area is fully pedestrianised.  But I'm just not seeing how a few extra seats outside the Greyfriar would really make the Friargate/Ringway junction look any worse.

Stab Factory

 

Social distancing par excellence

Remember the days when every man, woman, dog, cat and lesser spotted flycatcher had plans to open a micropub?  Seemed like back in 2018-19, they were closing small local shops and estate agents just so they could bung in a few tables, chairs and handpumps.  They were opening everywhere, and sometimes in locations which nobody could imagine such a business prospering in.

Now, Ashton-on-Ribble.  I really don't want to be too harsh on the place, as I used to work with several people who live there, but salubrious and well-heeled it is not.  If you see it mentioned in the local news outlets, it's unlikely to be for happy reasons.  But it had an empty shop unit, so a 'local entrepreneur' opened a micropub in it, during the otherwise unprosperous time of July 2020.  I checked it out at the time, note the 'micropub by numbers' decor and thought "Funny place to put it, but it should do ok as there's nothing like this round here."

I've often said that no matter what is attempted or intended upon opening, a new pub will quickly find its clientele and gravitate towards that.  And so it happened with the Tulketh Tap Room.  The signs that all was not well showed within a month or so of trading when it was reported for violating then-current rules on social distancing, something I also observed on my second (and to date, final) visit around this time.  Last summer, it even closed as it was having trouble getting customers to abide by the regs, though some were sceptical on how hard the owners were trying to ensure compliance.

Since the final scrapping of most COVID measures in July 2021, this obviously hasn't been an issue.  But issues are what keeps happening at Tulketh Tap.  If you talk to anyone about the place, you'll hear the tales of bar fights, lock-ins, drug dealing and mass brawls on the streets outside.  And most pub customers when upset with the service usually just complain to the management.  In Ashton, they put a molotov cocktail underneath the manager's car.

The local licencing authorities in Preston are not known for heavy handedness (if they were, probably half the pubs on Friargate would be on some kind of watch), but even they have had enough of the Tulketh Tap Room.  The licence is up for review, and few people in the know expect it to still be open next week.  And to be honest, it would not be missed.  It's not even the only micropub in the immediate area any more, though no doubt its existence has performed some kind of social service keeping certain characters out of the Tap End.

Though as the Tap End has been listed in the 2023 Good Beer Guide, the Tulketh Tap's probable closure has saved some unwary tickers an "interesting" experience if they haven't been following the Google Maps blue dot closely enough..

Pushback

 

As unlikely as it may seem, there's Panic On The Streets Of Fulwood, an otherwise leafy and sonambulant suburb of Preston. And what exactly is the cause of this disquiet? A micropub. Or rather, a micropub that does not exist.

You may have read (on the internet, of course) that a lot of printed media will be extinct by 2030. The owner of Fulwood's only newsagent has read this too, and wants to convert his shop to a licenced premises. And the locals are unhappy.

If you've ever read the standard objections of residents to a new pub, or indeed anything that may change the "character" of an area, this will sound very familiar. Noise. Drunks. Cars. Violence. Cigarette ends. General undesirable characters. And aren't there enough pubs already?

Most of the objections are the usual spurious nonsense. Broadway News is on a road just off Garstang Road, the major northbound route to Junction 32 of the M6, so cars and noise are a given. Fulwood is mainly middle aged and middle class, so drunken violence is unlikely, and it's doubtful the so-called lower orders will walk from Plungington or Cottam to pay micropub prices for lager.  As for parked cars, it's pretty much impossible to park anywhere in Fulwood without paying or risking a fine or FPN.

Rampant disorder bistro

It's true there are four other places selling alcoholic drinks within visual distance, but would another tip Garstang Road into chaos? Well, one's the local Indian restaurant and another is a fancy bistro. The other two are The Black Bull, an Ember Inn and Crafty Beggars, the local micropub. While the latter is a Pravha palace, a source of rampant disorder it is not.

So why the vehement objections? My view is it comes down to Fulwood itself.  As a resident myself, I'd hesitate to describe it as Nimby Central, but it's certainly odd as far as amenities go. There's no chippy, no takeaways and if anyone ever proposes building anything to solve the area's chronic parking issues, the locals have the plans firmly squashed. They just want the area to remain the same, for ever. This causes problems, and when it does, they want the problems sent elsewhere. Preferably the city centre or the less wealthy areas.

Quiet residential road

If the crowds at Crafty Beggars are anything to go by, Fulwood could easily support another micropub (the local alternatives being the Ember, a Sizzling and a Hungry Horse). It's true these are clustered together near the A6, but being overwhelmingly residential, the streets are too narrow anywhere else to locate a business with a reasonable amount of footfall.

For me personally, I'm more concerned that a newsagent thinks he can run a pub.