Grapes crushed

Here are a couple of pictures taken earlier this morning of the Grapes in Edgeley, Stockport, which served customers for the last time last Saturday night. It was then closed, and yesterday the external signage was removed and the rear windows covered with steel plates. Never again will drinkers thrill to the sounds of Lens Karaoke (sic). Note the gable-end signage on the StreetView image. I can’t see this one ever reopening as a pub. Along with the Bay Horse in Newton, Hyde and the New Inn in Castleton, Rochdale, it was one of three Robinson’s pubs closed on the same day.

In a landlocked situation on a pedestrianised shopping street, with no catering kitchen and no possibility of creating any kind of outdoor smoking area apart from the street, this one always looked to me as though it would ultimately become a victim of the smoking ban, and so it has proved, although maybe it lasted longer than I expected. For many years in the Eighties and Nineties it was a perennial fixture in the Good Beer Guide.

The Armoury on the other side of the roundabout, which has been extensively refurbished by Robinson’s since the StreetView image was taken, and has a spacious beer garden with covered smoking patios, looks likely to reap the benefit of what trade remained to the Grapes. A sad, but all too common, sign of the overall decline of the pub trade.