Clinging to the Ivy: how locals united to save pub that hosted top name rock stars

Tessa Blunden held her wedding reception in the Ivy House in Nunhead, South London, and the Victorian pub was dear to her heart. When the young solicitor heard last year that Enterprise Inns planned to close the Ivy House and sell it to a property developer she was outraged and found that many other customers shared her anger.

They didn’t go away and drink elsewhere but banded together and used new government legislation to help save the pub. The Ivy House will reopen in the late summer and will once again become a vibrant part of the local community.

And the spacious stage in the main room, where the likes of Elvis Costello, Joe Beck, Dr Feelgood and Ian Dury strutted their stuff, will once again offer “pub rock” to the drinking masses.

The pub dates from 1879 and was first known as the Newlands Tavern. It was family-owned for decades but in the 1930s it became part of the large estate of Truman’s, the East London brewer.

It was rebuilt in mock-Jacobean style with some Art Deco flourishes in the 1930s. The Ivy House became deeply rooted in the community when the surrounding area was badly bombed during World War Two and homeless families were allowed to stay in the pub.

As a result of the changes in the pub trade in the 1990s following the government’s Beer Orders, the Ivy House eventually became one of Enterprise Inns pubs. Last autumn Enterprise gave its tenants five days’ notice and announced it would close the pub and sell it to a property developer, who planned to turn it into flats.

The local branch of CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, immediately sprang in to action and began moves to get the Ivy House listed. Tessa Blunden is a CAMRA member and, as Enterprise soon found, used her skills as a lawyer specialising in real estate litigation to block the sale of the pub.

She set up a steering group dedicated to saving the Ivy House and recruited other local people with specialist skills. They include Emily Dresner, an expert in land management, Stuart Taylor, a town planner with knowledge of historic buildings, and teacher Hugo Simms who writes extensively about pubs in the area.

The steering group was aided by the new Localism Act, introduced in November 2011 and designed to hand more power from central government to local authorities and local people. The act has a provision known as the Community Right to Bid that enables groups to list a building as “an asset of community value”.

CAMRA had already won a Grade II listing for the Ivy House from English Heritage. Using the Localism Act, the steering group then won a further listing from the local authority, the London Borough of Southwark, declaring the pub to be a community asset.

Enterprise Inns  had sold the pub to property developers Maa Beti Ltd. The steering group now faced the daunting task of raising sufficient funds to buy the pub and reopen it.

Using their skills and experience, Tessa Blunden and her colleagues turned the steering group into the Ivy House Community Pub Ltd, which was registered with HM Revenue & Customs. The sum of £810,000 was needed to buy the pub, with more cash needed to refurbish the building and hire staff. The money was raised with a loan of £550,000 from the Architectural Heritage Fund, plus a grant of £450,000 from the Social Investment Business Group.

Tessa Blunden and her colleagues need a further £100,000 to finish the work on the pub. It’s designed like a hotel: the two spacious back rooms are served by a massive curved bar. They are fronted by a large reception area at the front that is empty and bleak at present and needs to be redesigned to enable it be used by customers.

The Ivy House’s special attraction, the large stage, also needs work to restore it to full use. The aim is once again to attract top rock groups to the pub and make it, as Blunden says, “a destination pub for music and beer lovers”.

In order to raise the additional investment needed, the limited company has become a co-operative and it’s calling on all those who support the Ivy House to become shareholders. To date, £20,000 has been raised: further information is available from the pub’s website www.ivyhousenunhead.com.

The pub will become a free house and will sell beers from local brewers. As a dedicated CAMRA member, Tessa Blunden, with the support of the local branch of the campaign, will trawl all parts of London for cask beer.

There’s much work still be done before the Ivy House reopens. But the message from Nunhead comes loud and clear: pubs don’t need to close. They can be saved.

Images: top, the Ivy House steering group with Tessa Blunden on the right. Below, the stage in the pub in its 'pub rock' heyday.

*First published in the Publican’s Morning Advertiser, 8 May 2013