When Paul Turner started an online petition calling for his local pub in the Staffordshire village of Himley to be saved after it was sold to new owners, he was expecting only a few hundred signatures. Then the Crooked House pub burned down, making headlines around the world.
“I expected it to be just a few names, but we’re approaching 16,000 signatures now,” said Turner. “It has turned into something completely different. The amount of support we’ve had has been unbelievable.”
When locals awoke on Sunday morning to the news that the pub, famously wonky due to mining subsidence, had burned to the ground the previous night, there was mounting anger.
As more details emerged, suspicions grew. The road to the pub, which had been sold to new owners nine days previously, was blocked with mounds of earth so fire engines were unable to get close to the burning building.
Online sleuthing increased, and other details seemed almost unbelievable. Prior to the pub being sold, a band had been booked to perform on that same Saturday night of the fire. Their name? Gasoline and Matches. (They have since released a statement saying it was merely an unfortunate coincidence.)
There was already nationwide concern over the blaze, but the events of Monday caused a huge outcry. While Staffordshire police were releasing a statement saying they were reviewing all evidence to investigate the cause of the fire, a video appeared online showing a digger knocking down the remains of the building. South Staffordshire council disclosed that they had spoken to the owners but did not agree to a full demolition. It also emerged that the digger had allegedly been hired and brought on site before the fire took place.
All that remains is a pile of rubble, along with scattered placards from locals who have been staging protests at the scene, demanding that the pub be rebuilt.
“I really hope we can get it rebuilt. It’s not just about the pub, I think people are sick of having our heritage knocked down, and losing buildings that we just shouldn’t be losing,” said Laura Catton, who was landlady at the Crooked House from 2006-2008.
Like many locals protesting at the site on Friday evening, she had fond memories of her time there. She met her husband at the pub, and had her first child while living there.
“My life would be very different without this building,” she said. “It was such a special place. You would walk in and instantly feel drunk because you’re not upright – well you are upright, but the building wasn’t.”
A grandfather clock appeared to be at an angle but was actually perpendicular. Customers would be handed a marble to roll along the bar and it would appear to be rolling uphill.
“That’s what everyone came to see – the bottles rolling up the tables instead of down,” said Emma Smith, from nearby Kingswinford.
“My nan and grandad brought me when I was little, and I’ve brought my kids here. Everybody knows the Crooked House, it’s part of Dudley, part of our history, and now it’s gone. There’s a lot of questions that need answering – everyone is so angry.”
Crooked or slanted buildings were not uncommon in the Black Country, once famed for its abundance of coal and thriving mining industry. “But they were usually knocked down,” said Chris Baker from the Black Country Society. “This one became an institution over the last century. It was one of the few remaining signs of the industry, of how things used to be.
“But for me, and for many others, it had become a metaphor. It was the sort of thing my mother used to say: when dad put up a shelf, ‘it was as straight as the Crooked House’. It had entered into the local consciousness; even if you had never been there, you knew about it.”
The building started life as a farmhouse in 1765 on an estate later owned by the Glynne family – the original name was the Glynne Arms.
Coalmining led the property to sink by several feet, and it only survived with the support of buttresses. It became known as Crooked House or Siden House – in Black Country dialect, siden means “side-in” or crooked – and was officially renamed in 2002.
“It was one of those things that feels like it belongs to us. It doesn’t matter who the owner is, it belongs to the Black Country,” said Turner.
The new owner of the Crooked House is, in fact, ATE Farms, a property company controlled by Carly Taylor and registered at the same address as Himley Environmental, which runs a landfill site next to the pub. Her husband, Adam, is a shareholder and former director of Himley Environmental.
With international media attention and calls from politicians for action, locals are confident the issue won’t be left to lie, especially when other councils have set a precedent that owners can be told to rebuild pubs when demolished without permission.
Andy Street, the mayor of the West Midlands, has been particularly vocal, saying he was “laser-focused” on ensuring the pub is “rebuilt brick-by-brick … and not consigned to history”.
The saga also cast light on the number of pubs demolished in recent years, and there are growing calls for tougher planning legislation to prevent it from happening elsewhere.
“This needs to lead to legislation which prevents this sort of thing happening in other areas, because there are a lot of traditional pubs that need protecting,” said Turner. “This one was crooked, this one was unique, and maybe this is the one that can get everybody’s attention and hopefully protect other pubs.”
