Free Houses

[bear & ragged staff]

In the 1960's and 1970's, the pubs in Birmingham were almost exclusively tied houses, to either M & B, Ansells and occasionally Davenports. However my Dad used to tell me of a free house near to Thorp Street / Hurst Street. I remember free houses as you moved further out of Birmingham i.e. The Fox at Walmley and more famously the Griffin at Shustoke. Can anybody enlighten me please? I am sure this topic has been discussed at length before and so my apologies if I am going over old ground.

 

[Morturn]

I remember that M&B and Ansell’s had a significant presence in the pub industry in and around Birmingham during the 1970s due to mergers and acquisitions, which allowed them to expand their operations and manage a larger number of pubs. Davenport only had a small handful of pubs in comparison.

I don’t know what triggered events, maybe the monopoly’s commission or something, but Ansell’s had to hand over a number of their pubs to Courage Brewery, the Oscott Tavern being one such casualty.

My recollection of the Fox at Warmly in 1971/2 was it was an M&B pub. I know the landlord from the Greyhound in Court Land Erdington.

I do recall the Griffin at Shustoke being a fee house

 

[bear & ragged staff]

Hi Mortum
Thanks for your reply. The Beer Orders Act of 1989 changed things for the big brewers like Ansells and M & B when they were limited to the amount of tied houses they could have. Hence the rise of the pub co's. Presumably some of the pubs sold were sold to individuals and became free houses, I am thinking of the Black Eagle at Hockley, great pub I understand is no longer with us. I left Brum in 1988 and so have little knowledge of the pub scene since then.

 

[John L]

I wonder if quite so many of our pubs would have been closed, quite so fast had the 1989 Act not put a limit on tied house numbers?

I was doing a little investigating last week, into the location in Wiltshire in which my grandfather's family had lived before he came up to Birmingham for work, following WW1. They lived in one of two adjoining small villages, both of which still include a pub. One of these is Arkell's owned, the other one which had been due for closure, but which is now flourishing again, because the locals got together and bought it, and now run it themselves. This shows how country folk mobilised to keep something that they had grown accustomed to using, but I guess they didn't have a local council or property developers, queueing up to build flats on the land or to change it's use into something else, as we do in Brum....yet!

 

[devonjim]

The Clarendon on the corner of Temple Row/Temple St. was a free house as was the George in the Tree in Balsall Common. They belonged to the same company, I think the Twist Group.