You know the place: crown glass windows, button-back banquettes, patterned carpets curling at the edges. A flyer boasting about the Premier League football coverage. Five pints on tap, three of them ales. No food, save for scampi fries, pork scratchings and something indeterminate pickled.
These pubs are the bread and butter of our proud nation. They were never supposed to be cool. But now, everywhere you turn, trendy young people populate them, cramming their smoking areas and supping their Guinness. As per last week’s headlines, Gen Z are apparently causing the death of the post work pint, but in London that simply doesn’t ring true, at least in some places. If you need proof, just look to the Army & Navy (1-3 Matthias Road, N16, @the_army_and_navy_pub_n168nn), the Blue Posts (22 Berwick Street, W1F, theblueposts.net), the King’s Arms (98 Kennington Lane, SE11, @kings.arms.kennington) and the Lord Clyde (27 Clennam Street, SE1, 020 7407 5643). In fact, you don’t even need to look; they practically rumble with popularity, as well as the tell-tale sound of Lime bikes locking and unlocking nearby.
Yet more and more of these sorts of places close every day. In the first quarter of 2024, 239 pubs in England and Wales were demolished or converted for other uses, which is roughly 80 closures per month. That’s up 51 per cent from the same period in 2023.
“I think because a lot of them are closing, there’s this element of them being a dying breed,” says London pub fanatic and founder of @londondeadpubs Jimmy McIntosh, who regularly goes viral on TikTok and Instagram for his tours of London pubs. “The videos I find tend to get the most love are the old man pubs or the kind of the pubs that people might not normally go into.”
McIntosh cites it as a reaction to the “millennial” aesthetic that took over bars and pubs in the 2010s. “[Those] stripped-back bars with exposed brickwork and industrial lighting. Very moodily lit but ultimately quite boring,” he says. “Where these pubs are a bit more maximal, they’re more interesting — you’re transported back to another time.”
Plus, the easiest explanation is the price. “Old man pubs”, as they’re known, are about the only places you can find a £5 pint in London any more, unless you’re a member of the House of Commons, at some kind of discounted foreign embassy bar, or are tackling the local Spoons. An average round of three pints in most pubs will set you back roughly £23, whereas a round in Army & Navy only costs £15. That’s a noticeable difference for young punters facing a cost-of-living crisis. Besides, being obviously wealthy isn’t fashionable anymore. “It’s not cool to be seen to have money,” says the admin behind Real Housewives of Clapton (RHOC), the Gen Z-favourite meme account that tracks the behaviours of trendy young Londoners. “Even if someone can afford expensive stuff, it’s cooler not to.”
Plus, to young people, the bliss of propping up the bar during retirement and drinking away a cushty pension is like a distant, intangible dream. By 2028, the state pension age will have increased by two years over the course of a single decade to 67. Following that pattern, the state pension age could be as high as 73 by the time a current 26-year-old turns 60. “There’s a carefree element to the whole thing,” RHOC says. “Older generations don’t do much. Typically, they are retired, indulging in their later life, going on holiday and wearing comfortable clothes. This is weirdly aspirational for younger people — less work, less stress and more actual life.”
And it’s not just the pubs. One of the hottest restaurant openings of recent months has been Tollington’s (172 Tollington Park, N4, @tollingtons.fishbar), a former fish and chip shop in Finsbury Park that’s been converted into a Spanish-inspired seafood restaurant by the much-hyped chef duo Four Legs, best known for their work at The Plimsoll (itself strong on the old boozer vibes). Despite its Iberian influences, Tollington’s is clearly a traditional English chippy, with its owners making the concerted decision to keep much of the interiors as they found them.
Tollington’s had beautiful bones and hadn’t been touched in 20 years, nor cleaned in 10. It was perfect
“So much of London is constantly gutted and then put back together with whatever materials are available on a large scale, and it’s destroying the beauty of the city,” says Ed McIlroy, co-owner of Four Legs. “[Tollington’s] had beautiful bones and a chip counter that I’ve always thought to be reminiscent of Spanish tapas counters. It hadn’t been touched in 20 years, nor cleaned in about 10. It was perfect.”
Venues appear to be heading that way, too. The increasingly popular Trades Hall (61-63 Tower Hamlets Road, E17, walthamstowtradeshall.com) in Walthamstow, a former trade union bar -turned-social-club, describes itself as a “1970s time capsule”. From the carpets to the ceiling tiles to the age of its clientele, nothing about it should naturally appeal to trendy youngsters. And yet.
“We’ve had 80 per cent year-on-year growth in membership,” says club secretary Michelle Fisher. Has its demographic changed lately? “100 per cent,” she says. “The average age of club members when I joined was significantly older. I was in my late twenties, and the first Saturday we went, we reduced the average age by about 50 years.”
Young people’s sudden interest in the Trades Hall doesn’t surprise Fisher that much. “It reminds people of a simpler time,” she says. “There’s been a massive amount of shit that’s been landed on young people, starting with the recession in 2008, and it just never seems to get any better. People are looking for things that give comfort, but also a sense of community and belonging.”
It’s at this point where you have to mention the G word. Gentrification. Hundreds of trendy young people packing out the cheap pubs and event spaces would rightfully raise the hackles of locals across London. But Fisher doesn’t think that’s what’s happening. “I think that’s a word that’s easy to band around, especially in London when people see changes to areas,” she says. “Maybe there are some people who’ve moved into the area and feel a sense of responsibility or guilt, but I think that actively trying to keep this one good thing going — we’re not for profit, we’re entirely for our members — that’s really important.”
So what about the ones that are for profit and could use this newly increased demand to justify a rise in pint prices? “I don’t think these pubs, like Army & Navy, have jacked up their prices with the more recent influxes — not more than they would have with inflation, anyway,” says McIntosh.
So if the locals aren’t being pushed out by higher prices, and this surge in popularity could help keep these kinds of pubs alive, the only real risk is that the youths are annoying the old men out of their old man pubs. McIntosh says they aren’t as bothered as you might expect. “I filmed one of my videos at the Olde Apple Tree (107 Sumner Road, SE15, 020 7277 0056) and people were really happy that non-regulars were coming in,” he recalls. “There was a mix of bemusement and genuine curiosity.” Similarly, McIntosh featured the King’s Head (126 Blackstock Road, N4, 020 7359 6350), an old man pub in Finsbury Park, in one of his videos, and the pub staff loved it. “They were like, ‘Thank you so much, business is booming because of you.’”
Ultimately, he thinks it makes for a nice change for everyone. “The punters want new faces in there,” he says. “It must get boring speaking to the same five blokes each night. So to have new blood is a good thing all round.”
