The owners of “Britain’s wonkiest pub” have been ordered to rebuild the building brick by brick after it was destroyed in a fire and unlawfully demolished.
The Crooked House in Himley, near Dudley in the West Midlands, must be restored to its former glory within three years, the local council has ordered, as police continue to investigate suspected arson.
Heritage campaigners hailed a “massive” victory on Tuesday after the owners of the 18th-century pub were issued an enforcement notice compelling them to recreate the building “back to what it was prior to the fire”.
Jubilant locals told The Times they had salvaged its original bricks, doors and even the bar’s bell from the debris in anticipation of the ruling.
Staffordshire police are investigating the blaze, which gutted the famous inn last August. Bulldozers reduced it to rubble hours later. Five men and one woman have been arrested and released on bail so far.
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Adam and Carly Taylor, aged 44 and 34 respectively, bought the Crooked House from Marston’s Brewery days before it was razed to the ground. The couple must now foot the bill to painstakingly rebuild the pub from what remains at the site. They have 30 days to appeal against the council’s order, which will be assessed by an independent planning inspector if they choose to fight it.
Celebrating the move, Andy Street, mayor of the West Midlands, praised the “fantastic work” of South Staffordshire council over the “unlawful demolition”. “They have been ordered to rebuild the pub back to what it was before the fire — just as we’ve been lobbying for,” he said.
Street stressed that the intervention “would never have happened” without the “tireless work” of local residents, such as the campaign group Save the Crooked House. “The owners messed with the wrong community — and you haven’t half proved that right. Thank you,” he said.
Similar campaigns to restore lost pubs have taken much longer. The Carlton Tavern in London was rebuilt after a six-year battle to bring it back. By comparison, The Crooked House was destroyed six months ago and could be welcoming punters for pints by 2027.
Paul Turner, who runs the Save the Crooked House campaign, told The Times their achievement was down to a combination of hard work from passionate locals, outrage at the owners and support from the press. “The pub existed before the United States of America,” Turner said. “It’s been owned by lots of different people over the years but it always belonged to the Black Country.
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“The idea that they can come in, buy a building from 1765 and just knock it down with no regard for its history … local people are absolutely disgusted by the whole thing. We feel we have been robbed of our heritage.”
Turner added that when the site was cleared, it was negotiated with contractors that the bricks were locked into containers “ready for a rebuild”.
The building was originally a farmhouse before it was converted into a pub called the Glynne Arms in the 1830s. Mining work caused one side of the structure to sink 1.2 metres lower than the other, leaving it leaning at a 16-degree tilt and creating an illusion inside that visitors said made them feel drunk before having a drop of beer. It was shored up with buttresses in the 1940s and eventually renamed The Crooked House.
Lawyers for the council have spent months investigating suspected breaches of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 after the demolition. The pub was a non-designated heritage asset and registered as a building of local importance, but the Taylors’ company then bought it for £675,000 and it was lost within a fortnight.
The Taylors, from Leicestershire, were said to be in dispute with the brewery over access to a landfill site run by Himley Environmental, in which Mr Taylor had shares and is a former director.
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The local authority said that it had engaged with the owners since the demolition but had reached a point where formal action was considered necessary.
Staffordshire police arrested three men, aged 33, 51, and 66, last October over the suspected arson blaze last August. A 34-year-old woman and two men, aged 44 and 23, were also arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit arson with intent or being reckless as to whether life was endangered. All six remain on police bail pending inquiries into the pub’s destruction.
Roger Lees, leader of South Staffordshire council, said: “A huge amount of time and resources have been put into investigating the unauthorised demolition of the Crooked House. We have had great support from the local community, our MPs and the mayor of the West Midlands, and from the campaign group whose aim is to see the Crooked House back to its former glory, which is the key objective of the enforcement notice.”
He added: “We have not taken this action lightly, but we believe that it is right to bring the owners, who demolished the building without consent, to account.”
