Waterfront Hall and Woodhouse pub in Somerset takes design prize marking first time award made in seven years.
A startlingly new pub on the waterfront at Portishead in Somerset, incorporating traditional elements such as oak floorboards, and very untraditional ones such as recycled sea freight containers, has won one of the rarest honours, the Camra pub design award for the best new build pub – an award that was last presented in 2006.
The judges of the annual British pub awards, who have often lamented what seemed a pattern of inexorable decline, said this year’s awards suggest the tide may finally have turned for the British pub.
The Hall and Woodhouse, which opened earlier this year at Portishead marina, also serves as the marina clubhouse, and despite its ultra-modern appearance serves Dorset-brewed Badger beers. It has scooped the new build title, praised by the judges as “visually striking”, and looking “entirely at home on the quayside”.
In most years the judges have found the new buildings so dismal they have refused to present the prize. Finding a new pub worthy of the honour at last was described as “the icing on the cake” of this year’s awards by Dr Steve Parissien, director of Compton Verney museum, and a member of the judging panel for many years.
This is a vintage year for the awards, to be announced on Friday, with winners in all categories for the first time in a decade, despite the continuing carnage among British pubs. Camra, the campaign for real ale, estimates pubs are still closing at the rate of 18 a week across the country – down from 52 a week in 2009, but still described as “a horrible rate of attrition”.
Parissien described the winners as “An engagingly distinct set of buildings and locations, ranging from a reborn rural village pub, via two delightful station watering holes, to two classic back-street urban locals. Such diversity is exactly what the pub is all about, defining the life-affirming variety that lies at the heart of this marvellous and peculiarly British concept.”
The judges said pubs were still closing at an alarming rate, “draining the social life and sense of place from rural villages and urban communities across the nation”. However the awards were “really good news” after recession-hit years when many pub owners seemed to care little even about maintenance.
The refurbishment award went to a village pub which seemed doomed to closure after years of decay. The White Swan, in Shawell in Leicestershire, was taken over last year by chef Rory McClean, and after a glossy makeover now has racks of champagne chilling behind the bar, but also still welcomes children and dogs. The judges praised “attention to detail which takes it well beyond the normal pub makeover” – and particularly noted the elegant new woodwork “with none of those stick-in, cod-Georgian mouldings”.
The English Heritage Conservation Award went to the Albion Ale House, , a 1930s Grade II listed pub in Conwy in north Wales, which is already on the Camra national inventory of the most valuable pubs as ‘”the best example of an unaltered inter-war pub in Wales”. After a recent refurbishment of the art deco interior it still has a coal open fire, but no television or piped music. The Albion also shared the Joe Goodwin award for the best street corner local with a small London pub in Putney,the Cat’s Back in Putney, praised as “a back street jewel”. The Joe Goodwin is another award which the judges have frequently withheld, and it is the first time it has ever been presented jointly to two pubs.
The awards were to be presented on Friday at The York Tap, on the station platform at York, converted from an old model railway museum in a building originally constructed in 1906 but derelict for many years. It won the Conversion to Pub Use award. Another railway building, the Parcel Yard in Kings Cross, was highly commended.
The William Hawkes, a converted gunmaker’s shop in Hull, newly crowned as the next UK City of Culture, was also highly commended.
Overall, the judges said, the winners “demonstrate that, even though we may continue to be beset by economic woes, the tide may well have turned for the British pub”.
