The quietest pubs in town

 When I wander around a town with camera in hand, I often ignore views and buildings because, well, they're a bit ordinary. But then our local paper runs features on its website where they dig out twenty photos of the town centre from the 1970s, and it's fascinating. Just ordinary shots of ordinary buildings, but the pictures capture the time, and we all look at them and remember. 

So, in future I will try to take a few "ordinary" pictures and hope they mature into something worth looking at. 

As a start, another regular feature in the local paper are the stories of pubs closing without warning. A local brewery, Sam Smiths, own about 300 pubs, mostly across the North of England, with another cluster in and around London. The northern branch of the business is run by Humphrey Smith, and while his idea of what a pub should be might appeal to some, it doesn't make life easy for the people running them. No television, no music, no phones, no electronic devices, no swearing...So as well as the usual long hours and hard work running the place, the landlord has to police the customers. And woe betide if Humphrey pays a visit and finds things not to his liking. Out you go. Legend has it that one landlord was removed for not serving Humphrey's favourite pudding.

Once these pubs close, they tend to stay that way, sometimes for years. The vacancies are advertised on Gumtree, and notices in the windows appeal for couples looking to run a pub, but either nobody is applying or the aptitude tests are a bit on the steep side.

Another popular pub in York suddenly closed this week, which prompted me to find the photos I took a few weeks ago of three other pubs in and around the city, all in a similar state. One is literally a few yards from the front of York Minster, a place crowded with tourists every day of the year. But the pub stays empty...

The Six Bells, Strensall

The York Arms

The Brown Cow