Further perusal of the historic pub interiors list shows that we have most certainly been sold a pub with theis CAMRA survey. When is a restoration not a refit after all? Of the five pubs in Central London with authentic pub interiors, two are Sam Smiths who go a bomb on turning back the clock and the other three are pleasant enough tourist traps. Whilst I would agree the The Salisbury on St Martin’s Lane has a sumptuous gin palace interior, you are talking absolute bollocks if you are saying that nary a lick of paint has seen it. There is definately at least a screen that has been taken down.
Things get even more suspicious when we look at North London. The Salisbury Green Lanes, and the Queen’s Hotel in Crouch End. Both nice, rambling examples of Victoriana, who have both been – as the CAMRA North London Drinker pamplet says – sympathetically restored. The Salisbury was more authentic back in the days I drank there, cheap and nasty with its rambling rooms. But again tell me that this was not a seperated pubs and you will be talking nonsense.
Yet again this list is a CAMRA backslap to the “protected pubs” or to the occasional pub chain that tries to restore a pub. And don’t get me wrong, restoring a pub is a nice enough idea. But let us not pretend that nothing has changed for two hundred years. Show me a pub on their historic interiors list with a ladies toilet and I’ll show you the door.
It is intereresting that the Guardian piece notes a 1930’s estate pub to be added to the list. I would be surprised that any other estate pubs, or indeed pubs built this century have made the list. It’s a horse brasses or nothing kind of list.
CAMRA have out now a book of pubs with interesting and historic interiors, which sits by my bedside table. Occasionally I flick through it, to find some local pubs tracing their veritable ancestry back to the 30s-50s (including the one closest to my own house, the Man of Kent). If this is in any way indicative, then they’ve moved on to featuring pubs you wouldn’t ordinarily consider entering (the Flying Scotsman, anyone?), and yet I sort of prefer this kind of heterodoxy to the usual Sam Smith’s pseudo-Victoriana nonsense. Perhaps they’ll champion decent lager next? Or is that too much to hope for?