WHY IS THE IVY HOUSE A GRADE 2 LISTED BUILDING? Neil Pettigrew

In April 2012, the Ivy House was declared a Grade 2 listed building by English Heritage. This means that no alterations may be made, either inside or outside, without permission - thereby hopefully preserving the pub’s future as a public house. The listing was the result of spirited application made by the South East London branch of CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale), who identified this pub as being worthy of special attention.

That’s a brief history of the listing application. But just what is so special about the Ivy House and why did English Heritage consider it worthy of this extra protection?

Over the years, we have all been guilty of taking pubs for granted. We often spend an evening in a pub, enjoying the atmosphere and conviviality, and yet never giving a thought either to its exterior architectural features or the many details of the interior décor which are the very things which lend the pub its character. Purpose-built pubs like the Ivy House are always full of fascinating minor details that are unique to the licensing trade. Taking a closer look at the merits of this well-preserved pub serves as good reminder of the fact that in recent decades so many other pubs have gone so badly wrong. Designed by A. E. Sewell, the house architect of the Truman’s brewery, the Ivy House was built in the 1930s (exact year unknown), and originally named the Newlands Tavern. It is an outstanding example of the “improved public house” of the inter-war period. Unlike previous establishments whose sole purpose was the consumption of alcohol, these newer, larger buildings were intended to offer a greater range of facilities, thereby attracting – it was hoped – a better-behaved clientele. The facilities might include, for example, some accommodation, a function room with a stage and a dining room. The Ivy House offered all of these. Most of these “improved” pubs were large roadhouse sites attracting passing motorists with the aid of handy car parks. But where the Ivy House differs is that it is a rare 1930s example of one that is a suburban, back-street pub – and not many of these survive with any degree of internal intactness.

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The front bar, complete with spitoon trough

The majority of inter-war pubs were given a mock-Tudor exterior but the Ivy House, with its pleasingly-symmetrical neo-Georgian frontage, unusually bucks this trend. Compared to the interior, the exterior is very restrained, with just a few flourishes such as the scallop-shell stonework above a first-floor window, and handsome stone images of eagles – the sign of the Truman’s brewery – above two windows. Above each of the two main entrances is a square stone plaque containing two horizontal raised strips – their significance is lost on me. Can anyone help out here? Each plaque is flanked by two inverted bushels of vegetation of some kind; they are very decorative and no doubt have some symbolic significance, but again it is unknown to me. English Heritage, in their report on the building, describe them as ‘volutes’ but I am not sure that is correct, as this term implies a spiralling, shell-like shape.

What is really special about the Ivy House is its multi-room interior. Some of the original layout has been lost: the jug and bottle take-away counter, originally accessed through a central door (now boarded up) has gone, as has the bar on the right-hand side of the building (converted to accommodation in the 1990s), but everything else is almost exactly as it must have looked eighty years ago. The pleasing overall layout has been retained, with a central servery catering for all the rooms that radiate around it. This had been the preferred layout in most pubs since late Victorian times, allowing a small number of staff to service several rooms. But in more recent decades pub operators, valuing profit above heritage, have ripped out most of these central serveries and moved them alongside one wall, thereby opening up a much larger space in which to cram a greater number of customers. In the process, they robbed these premises of the cosy atmosphere which was one of the

main attractions of the pubs in the first place: pubs changed from being comfortable, intimate places to large, characterless drinking halls. Of the three rooms, my favourite is the first one you enter from the street, on the left hand side of the pub. Other people may have a different favourite. To enter the pub, you must pass through a proper entrance lobby still consisting of two sets of doors. This is a classy feature and also a handy draft excluder, but it is rarely found in pubs nowadays because most pub operators, again thinking more of profit than architectural merit, have ripped these out in order to squeeze in a few extra customers.

Stepping through these doors into the pub is like stepping back in time: all the original 1930s Truman’s décor and signage is still intact. All around the attractively wood-panelled walls at picture-rail height is original gold lettering advertising the brewery’s drinks: “Trubrown Ale”, “Truman Eagle Ales”, “Imperial Stout”, etc. These names are in themselves a glimpse into a lost past: none of these brews has existed for many years, the brewery having ceased production over twenty years ago. The curved bar counter, and the handsome woodwork below it, are all original. The fireplace, too, is original. Around the base of the bar counter is a tiled spittoon trough. Yes, that chequered area on the floor beneath the bar is not just there to catch the drips, but in its day was also handy for spitting out cigar ends and anything else you cared to aim at it.

Above all, what excites me about this room is that it is an authentic drinking room. No fancy dining, no music or anything else was ever intended to take place in here. Everything about the design and décor is there to serve the requirements of 1930s drinkers, most of them

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working-class men whose objective was to quaff several pints of Truman’s bitter, satisfying a thirst probably created by a hard day in a south east London factory. And how marvelous that over eighty years later we can still enjoy the same unchanged surroundings.

Also in this room is some original fitted bench seating. This is also a rarity: today most pub operators perceive bench seating as an old-fashioned throwback to the 1960s and 1970s, and in thousands of pubs up and down the country it has been ripped out and replaced by dining tables and dining chairs. This is one of the great crimes of the modern pub trade. Bench seating, especially the upholstered kind which proliferated in the 1960s and 1970s, was ideal for pubs. One could spread oneself out comfortably on one of these, or snuggle up closely to

a girlfriend. Nowadays, however, we are all expected to perch on straight-backed dining chairs and face one another from the opposite sides of a dining table, as if interviewing for a job.

A door from this room leads into the gentlemen’s toilets, and those people who are sad enough to find interest in antiquated urinals will be delighted to find that the white tiling in here dates from the 1930s. Yes, I am one of those sad people. A set of original double doors take you from the front room through to the music hall, the walls of which are also elegantly wood-panelled. An original fireplace, with impressive stone surround, survives. It is believed that, above the stage, the original proscenium arch is still present, albeit it concealed behind more modern fittings.

From here you can walk through another set of original double doors into the remarkable ‘refreshment room’. It is done out in Jacobean style and intended to suggest a smaller version of a baronial banqueting hall. This is, of course, all “mock old”, but it is done rather well and, now that we are well into the twenty-first century, it has taken on its own degree of antiquity. Again the walls are handsomely adorned with two-thirds-height wood panelling. A centrepiece is a large inglenook-style fireplace with stone surround and flanked by two built-in settles. Above it is some kind of heraldic emblem bearing the image of a portcullis. Other plaster plaques of animals, birds and a ship are also to be seen around the walls.

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Fitted bench seating

Also worth noting are the pub’s windows. Several external ones still retain their coloured glass, a feature which adds cosiness to the interior. Fortunately the Ivy House has not been subjected to another ghastly modern trend: the misguided removal of all coloured, frosted, etched or leaded windows and their replacement by plain glass. Almost all modern pub owners are operating under the misguided belief that pubs need “brightening up”. They want to let in the maximum amount of natural light. And they want passers-by to be able to look in, and they want the customers in the pub to be able to watch the world go by outside. While they were at it, these same pub operators decided to do away with all the curtains which used to adorn all pub windows, thereby letting in even more natural light.

Pub operators who do this are completely wrong… in my opinion. They have failed to realise that one of the great attractions of pubs has traditionally been that once through the doors, you could sit in an oasis of calm and forget the outside world. They have overlooked the fact that frosted or coloured windows had the pleasing effect of diffusing light from outside and thereby adding considerably to the cosiness of the interior. They are oblivious to the fact that the last thing you want while supping your pint is to see the rest of the world go by, and, even worse, have the rest of the world stare in at you. To these pub operators, the fact that the curtains lent a welcome, homely touch is regarded as old-fashioned and they are to thrown out. Their sole objective: to be bright and modern, and to resemble a continental café. But in the Ivy House, that feeling of cosiness has heroically survived. And let’s not forget the vast, multi-room cellar. If you ever get the chance to visit the cellar of a purpose-built pub, seize it. Victorian pubs,

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Leaded glass and wood panelling around a serving hatch in the refreshment room

always reeking of history are best, but they are all interesting. In the Ivy House, it is worth noticing an old electric contraption – possibly dating from the 1930s, but who knows? – that took bottles up an down from ground floor to cellar (and thereby making the old pot boys redundant).

Two areas of the pub have unfortunately been lost through conversion to other use. In the frontage, you can see where a middle door has been sealed up. This was the entrance to the jug-and-bottle takeaway counter (from the days before supermarkets sold cheap alcohol). This area has now been converted to a ladies’ toilet. Likewise, the entrance on the right-hand side has been sealed up. Up until some time in the 1990s, this led to a large bar. It was in here, between 1986 and 1989, that I was regular customer – a period when this was the only room open to the public. Now it has been converted to accommodation and other use. It would not be beyond the realms of possibility to restore this right-hand bar to its original use, and if this was done then the pub would look – magnificently - more or less as it did eighty years ago.

These serious losses might well have caused English Heritage to decide that too much alteration had occurred for them to consider statutory listing. But they were so impressed with what remains of the pub, and judged it to be of such a high standard, that listing was successful .

Unfortunately, at the time of writing (January 2013), all of this discussion is academic, as the pub is closed. But let’s hope that very soon it will be re-opened to the public so that we can all enjoy its interior. With the recent revival of the Truman’s Brewery name in London, we even have the prospect that soon we might be able to experience a

moment of thrilling historical continuity: drinking a pint of Truman’s bitter while surrounded by original 1930s Truman’s signage!

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