I've been to a few derelict pubs lately- one which I'd had my eye on for years, and the other that I stumbled across completely by accident. This one is different, in that I have some acquaintances who used to run it. Upon hearing news of its pending renovation, they recommended that I check it out before it was gone forever. However, they also seemed to have their doubts that I'd make it out alive.
Not particularly keen on dying, I consulted my handlers, who like my pretty songs and like to sing along, and they politely reassured me that I can't actually die. I don't believe them, but I seem to require minimum persuasion to do silly things, so here we are.
The pub was built in 1939, although upon researching its early days I found out that the land was actually targeted for the construction of a chapel before the brewery managed to get their hands on it. Perhaps had they not, then we'd have a smashed up chapel on this street instead. Who knows?
For me, it's mildly comical because it continues a noticable trend of pubs winning over churches. In a past blog post, I looked at how the power of booze over God had caused an entire village to move two miles down the road, away from a church. And then of course we saw the Limelight, a chapel that was actually converted into a nightclub.
In the Woodbines case the alcohol won before the church was even built. Suck on that, Jesus.
As a minor claim to fame, the pub also shows up in the background of the 1957 movie "The man in the sky." It's very fleeting, and probably only really noticable to the locals, but the pub does have people sat outside it, which was a nice blink-and-you-miss-it glimpse at its past as a popular drinking hole.
The external sign boasts that the pub has a great atmosphere, which makes it pretty ironic that the former occupants warned me to watch out for dodgy people, used needles and to wear a stab-proof vest.
Also interesting is that the part of the sign that says "Good food" has also been defaced. I guess at some point someone decided that rats aren't nutritious.
At some point in the early 21st Century, the pub changed its name to the Red Rooster, which was a pointless move in my opinion. I have no doubt whatsoever that those who frequented it still called it the Woodbine. This is evidenced by the fact that they changed it back.
It was following the change back to the Woodbine that my informants got their hands on it, keeping it in their family allegedly until roughly 2009 or 2010 before it changed hands once again, finally closing in 2013.
From what I gather, it was always a bit of a magnet for antisocial behaviour. They caught the occasional drudgeon doing drugs in the loo, they had their fair share of break ins, and in 2013 a jaguar exploded right outside it. That's the car, not the cat. Somehow I think a wild exotic animal exploding in front of a British pub would have made a few more headlines.
In more recent years, various plans have fallen through, but there's one activity here that remains consistent, and that's fly tipping. This just seems to be the place to go if you want to dump some stuff. So if you want a new sofa, but can't afford one, and don't mind if it smells of cheese, this is the place to go!
Look at this beauty! If you get hungry while watching a film but you cant be bothered to get a snack, just eat the mushrooms growing on this! Sure, it's probably had a murdered prostitute or two decompose on it, but just think of the money you'll save!
Allegedly, in spite of repeated compaints from the locals, the council have struggled to do much, because the fly tipping is on private property, so the clean-up has to be carried out by the owners. All the council can really do is badger them.
From what I can tell, the owners don't seem to care. They have tried a variety of projects, including opening a car wash in 2016, which was met with complaints from the locals. They then announced a plan to convert the lower floors into shop units, but the only retail transaction to take place on the premises is the occasional drug deal. Finally the owners promised to both remove the flytipping and keep people out. To that end, they went for the simplest option, and built a fence. That'll show people!
Except it didn't.
Nobody liked the fence, and eventually it had to be taken down because it went against council planning regulations, due to being over six feet tall.
To me that's a pretty silly rule. The council want to keep people out of the Woodbine, but they don't want a barrier over six feet tall?
I think the local council must be made up of dwarfs or something, because everyone knows that a barrier less than six feet tall can be scaled by just about anyone, except maybe disabled people, newborns, and of course, dwarfs.
But even the illegally tall fence wasn't much of a deterent. From what I can see on streetview it looks about as stable as the German economy in the 1930s. Quite simply, there were many ways to get around it, and one of the options was to simply wait for a light breeze to push it down. By the time the owners did take it down, most of it had been stolen anyway, revealing that the flytipping behind it hadn't been removed after all! The fence had just been put up to hide it!
Sneaky!
Efforts to stop the antisocial behaviour has been minimum. A camera was installed but the footage was only retained for two days. And the council did offer rewards for anyone who reported a fly tipper. But really what it all results in is a massive lack of faith in the local authority by the folks who live around here.
Just to show how little the faith the locals have in the powers-that-be, here some local vandals have used the threat of demolition to mock the local druggies. When anti-social behaviour is being mocked by other anti-social behaviour, you know that the public are pissed off. Nothing says "The police aren't doing enough" quite like reeeeally unenthusiastic vigilantism. Except this isn't really vigilantism, is it? It's just scrawling on a wall, tucked around the corner where the cops can't see. But it's a start.
As you can tell by the door wrapped in barbed wire, steps have been taken to keep people out. But this is really a minimum effort job. Let's slip inside!
Wow! Check it out! The bar is still here and everything!There's an English flag hanging on the wall, and a pool table still in one piece, albeit dirty. But otherwise this pub is in surprisingly good condition.
There's a sign next to the door that says "Please mind stepping off stage," which implies that the was some sort of small performance area, although it looks mighty cramped for that sort of thing. That could just be the clutter though.
What strikes me as odd is that it looks like nothing has been done to the place since it closed in 2013. For all the talk about putting it to a new, different use, this is quite unmistakably still a bar. No work has ever been done on it. The plans have been all talk.
There's still pool balls, after all these years. That's pretty cool.
There's still loads of glasses behind the bar.
Onto the lounge bar, where work boots are prohibited.
I guess the pub had problems with people bringing in their own alcohol.
The former occupants tell me that the pub was most certainly haunted, and that numerous family members and customers saw ghosts. An elderly lady in white was seen quite often, as was a man in a suit and a bowler hat. My informant also told me that she was once behind the bar shortly after closing when someone quite unmistakably walked past the bar in spite of her being alone in the building.
And as for the families dog, Bud, he had to sleep upstairs because if they left him downstairs he'd freak out during the night and defecate everywhere.
For the record, I personally didn't experience anything spooky while I was in here.
However, the Woodbine is the site of at least two suicides, one who hung himself in 2012 and an earlier incident where a man threw himself onto the nearby railway tracks.
It's pretty tragic, but I think depression and mental health issues and their tragic outcomes should not be swept under the rug, given that it's becoming something of an epidemic.
If you do need to talk to someone, do it. It doesn't matter if they don't want to listen- just talk at them. Getting it out of your head and into words is much more important than if they can't concentrate on the latest episode of Coronation Street.
And I get that people fear ridicule, but in my experience bullies mostly like to shit on happy people, or at least people who have a chance at achieving happiness if they can manage a day without getting shat on.
This is why, for all my cheeky jokes and bad humour, I save the politically incorrect words like, for example, "retard" for bullies and the like. Because nothing is more retarded and unnatural than someone shitting on someone elses happiness. Think about it- a key component to nature is survival of the species. When early humans realised that cooking a chicken made it safe to eat, did the other humans laugh? No, they learned from it. That way the species survived. Nowadays we have depressed people everywhere and people keep killing themselves because existence seems pointless and futile. It's such a minefield of misery out there that as soon as we see someone who has achieved happiness at nobodies expense, our survival instincts should be saying "learn from them." Anyone who shits on someone for being happy is a retard. Like a fish trying to breathe oxygen.
But I digress. Let's get back to the Woodbine.
There's an old TV frame on the wall, but the TV is long gone.
Moving onto the best part of any derelict building...
Still in better condition than the toilets in some active pubs and clubs.
And here we have the kitchen, where the advertised "Good food" was served up.
So in regards to projects put forward, the public seem quick to say "Something needs to be done about this communual eyestore," but as soon as something is proposed, like a carwash, retail units, and most recently an apartment block, the public then criticise any idea put forward, keeping the Woodbine in some form of production limbo. In regards to putting the area to commercial use, one guy told the papers "I care who will be working there because I will have to look at it every day."
You do realise ugly people need to earn a living too, right?
Just imagine going for a job interview, meeting the manager and then having them say "Oh, also joining us in the interview is this guy from across the road. He doesn't work here, but we're only allowed to give you a job if he finds you attractive."
Imagine that rejection.
"But I'm the most gifted neuroscientist in the country. I've won awards and saved lives."
"I know, but you have a potbelly, and one of your nostrils is a tenth of a millimeter wider than the other. Sorry. Nothing personal."
Of course, this was a news article that I read this quote in, so it's likely to be misquoted, taken out of context, or made up entirely. It is, after all, the mainstream media, and it's easier to find a nun wearing a strap-on than it is to find anything factual.
Moving on upstairs...
Allegedly, when my informant had the pub, this is where the dog lived, at the top of the stairs. It seemed that following the break-in, they prioritised keeping the family safe over keeping the bar safe, which makes sense.
Up here things are bleaker and more indicative of past attempted renovations. And indeed, during the fenced-up period of the Woodbines post-closure limbo, people did see lights on up here, seemingly as they were preparing the upstairs for residential accomodation above the shop units, but that project was dropped.
There are signs that someones been squatting up here, but they're long gone. Personally, with the reputation of antisocial behaviour here, I'd be kinda terrified to sleep here, even if I was homeless and desperate.
This room was once the family lounge.
Every room has been fitted with an ensuite shower.
And right at the end of the hallway is the family bedroom, where the guys who ran the place lived. It doesn't look very accomodating anymore, what with the broken glass, clutter and mold.
The final stop is, of course, the cellar. And as far as cellars go, it's unusually cavernous.
In the last pub cellar I set foot in, I found some medieval torture equipment. Or at least, a modern replica of some. Somehow I doubted the Woodbine would have anything quite that eyebrow-raising, but at the bottom of the stairs blocking my path was an old games table, so it's looking promising.
My hopes of finding anything spectacular were dashed when I realised that it was just another generic pub cellar. Still, it's wonderfully maze-like and incredibly creepy, and I wouldn't have been able to leave without checking it out.
Here on the floor of the cellar are the signs advertising the carwash that never was.
That's all I got. The future of the Woodbine looks bleak. With smashed windows, the interior is largely exposed to the elements, and the cost of making it liveable is likely to be astronomical and growing daily as the place decays.
The more recent plans for the place involved converting the pub into twelve flats, and building an apartment block of eighteen more right next to it. That sounds awfully cramped given the size of the area. One can only imagine them building something like that Japanese capsule hotel, where each "room" is basically the length and width of a single bed.
The plans don't seem to be going anywhere, and the pub remains in limbo. The locals continue to complain about the eyesore, the fly tipping and the drugs, which is fair enough. Most people seem to think that the council and police could do more. The council continue to badger the owners, and the owners continue to not care.
So what can be done?
Well, as we learned when I blogged about the Seafront Hotel, under Section 215 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, if a building is having a harmful effect on the area, the local authority can demand that action be taken, issue a notice period, and then under 219 of the same act, if nothing is done by the date issued on the notice period, the local authority can enter the property to make the desired changes, and then charge the owners for the cost.
So the powers-that-be could actually demolish this pub themselves, and charge the owners for the expenses. Of course there's probably some procedure to follow beforehand, but it is an option. But that's a whole rabbit hole of legalese. Given that I'm not on the council, and don't wish to be, I can't really comment on what they're doing to clean up this area.
That's it for my blog on the Woodbine though.
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