The fickle finger of fate

In 2009, Marston’s opened a new dining pub called the Fallow Deer prominently situated on the A6 Chapel-en-le-Frith bypass in Derbyshire. It was faced with stone to match the local environment, resulting in a more attractive and upmarket appearance than is typical of such establishments. I called in a year or so later to see what it was like, but unsurprisingly found it entirely geared up for eating, with nowhere to just sit down for a drink.

A few years later it was refurbished and renamed the Fickle Mermaid. While Fallow Deer is just a generic “rural name” this did in fact relate to the local legend of the mermaid's pool on the side of Kinder Scout, where allegedly a beautiful mermaid used to lure men and either make them immortal or end their lives. However, it’s doubtful whether many people actually knew of that – I had to look it up – and to most it would simply come across as a rather odd and whimsical name for a pub fifty miles from the sea.

I didn’t really give it much more thought, but was surprised to read a report that planning permission had been granted to demolish it and replace it with a petrol station and takeaway coffee shop. It has to be said that if a large and expensive new-build pub is to be demolished only thirteen years after it opened it is a very poor reflection on the original site selection.

I’ve written before about how these family dining pubs, while they may have little appeal to the beer enthusiast, have been something of a success story for the pub industry in recent years, and Marston’s and Greene King have both invested considerable sums in developing them. Indeed, Marston’s opened a new one in my original home town of Runcorn, the Ten Lock Flight, shortly before Covid struck. I have often noticed when passing how busy they appear to be at teatime and early evening at weekends, a time when I would never really consider going to a pub unless in the later stages of an urban pub crawl.

However, maybe the clue is in the title of that blogpost, “Follow the money to the retail park.” I don’t claim to be an expert on pub site selection, but I suspect an important factor for this type of pub is to have a substantial population within ten or fifteen minutes’ drive, and a further plus point is being able to combine the pub visit with a bit of shopping or another leisure activity such as the cinema or bowling.

The Fickle Mermaid, while it is in a prominent position on the main road heading from the Manchester area into the Peak District, doesn’t actually have all that people living nearby. If people are going out for a day in Peak, they’ll probably not want to eat until they actually get there and, while I can imagine it might become busy with returning trippers in the early evenings at weekends, that isn’t going to be enough to sustain it throughout the week.

In any case, the planning application was rejected on appeal, so it remains to be seen what Marston’s response is. They could try to make another go of it, which has not been unknown elsewhere, or find another pub operator who is interested. I don’t see that a dining pub in that location is inherently a lost cause. Or they could board it up and leave it to rot, and come back with another planning application in eighteen months, by which time it will have become an eyesore.

This prompted me to ask on Twitter for other examples of short-lived new-build pubs, and quite a few were forthcoming. Another in my local area was the Bandstand in Gorton, Manchester, which stood on a small retail park and can’t have lasted fifteen years. And, in the late 1980s, Banks’s built the Springbrook at the A50/A56 junction on the eastern fringe of Warrington, where planning permission has now been requested to redevelop the site into a care home. There were plenty of instances of brand new pubs of various types that had barely lasted twenty years.

I odn’t know how it compares with other types of retail and hospitality business, but pub operators in general seem to have a distinctly patchy record on identifying locations for new pubs. While Wetherspoon’s are not generally in the business of new-builds, they have had their fair share of missteps over the years. One of the worst was the Sir Edwin Chadwick in Longsight, Manchester, where they totally misread the character of the area and the way it was likely to develop. I think it only lasted about five years. Apparently, Tim Martin, on one of his regular tours, walked through the door, took a quick look around and instantly said “Get rid!” Also in this general area, are the Lodestar in Neston, Cheshire and the Red Lyon in Whitchurch, Shropshire, neither of which lasted long under their stewardship and are now closed. One can only assume that Wetherspoon’s misjudged the character of the towns concerned, as they seem to thrive in other places of similar size.