Sign up for the Covid-19 pub quiz

 

MANY of the districts of London are named after their local pub even when, as in the case of the Bricklayers Arms, the eponymous boozer is but a distant memory.

In the 1970s, the area around it was trashed to make way for a vast, oversized roundabout and concrete flyover at one of the city’s most historic crossroads.

The Brick was replaced by a now rather forlorn old folk’s home that was looking more forlorn than ever this morning as only a few virus-avoiding locals scuttered past to the local shops.

Six of the stops on the London underground are named after local pubs, among them the Angel, Royal Oak, Swiss Cottage.

Just north of the Bricklayers Arms is the Elephant and Castle district, where a pale version of the original local that gives it its name survives in an area that’s become a hangout for the city’s Latin American community.

The Brick was at a junction of the Dover Road from London. Chaucer and his pilgrims would have taken it on the way to Canterbury without the benefit of the flyover. There had been inns on the site for 600 years until the philistines in charge of London knocked the last one down.

Stan Blake, who’d been a colonel in the East African Rifles and a champion army boxer, was the last landlord. He moved on to run the Five Bells pub in New Cross just down the Old Kent Road road. (More of him and it in later columns).

Anyway, you may well ask: “what’s all this that got to do with coronageddon?”

I’ll tell you: PUBS.

When a city names its neighbourhoods after pubs rather than, say, churches or palaces, you can see where its priorities lie. The closure of the boozers has been perhaps the single biggest blow of the present emergency.

Thankfully, the government stepped in to add off-licences – liquor stores – to the list of essential retailers.

Some people have taken to having virtual pubs online. That has its advantages. You don’t have to buy a round and you don’t have to stagger from the bar carrying five pints in two hands. (Note to foreign friends: Our pubs don’t do table service.)

Another advantage of the pubs closure is that you don’t have to listen to the loudmouth pub bore explaining that the virus panic is a. overblown, b. a Chinese plot or, c. an opportunity to witness the leadership qualities of Boris Johnson.

Sadly, London’s boozers may never recover. The Brick disappeared back in the 70s and in the same part of South London and in the rest of the city pubs have been closing at the rate of knots.

Many have been turned into bijou central London pied-à-terre by developers who clearly never buy their round. A pint now costs an hour’s wages. And you can’t smoke in them any longer!!!

Covid-19 could be the final blow. We may decide we like being stuck at home with our immediate families and no longer feel the need to “nip down the pub” to see our mates of an evening.

Get real, people! Is that really the scenario that you want to offer future generations.

Once this is over, we should all head straight to the nearest pub and, here in South London, we should campaign for the reopening of The Bricklayers Arms. Who needs a concrete flyover anyway?

Believe it or not, even as we hunker down at home, there’s a campaign afoot to have a new London tube station named after it!