I wrote some time ago about the pub at the end of the garden, and how since February 2009 it had been in sad decline. I left the story at the beginning of 2011 with things looking up under the ‘new management’.

I should probably point out at this stage that whilst we are certainly not tee-total, we have never been customers of the establishment. In fact we should probably get out more as I have to admit  that ‘pub spotting’ has become a bit of a hobby of ours since the last regular landlord left in February 2009.

Sometimes we could only identify the procession of different managers by the cars they parked outside and so we often referred to them by the make or model of their vehicles. Sad I know, but we weren’t doing any harm and the comings and goings kept us amused

One day at the end of July we returned home and noticed that the greenhouse had been dismantled. Being the seasoned pub-spotters that we were, the inevitable question was, is this a sign of things to come? Sure enough a couple of days later a removal van arrived and the ‘new management’ moved out, which threw up a completely different story if you happen to be interested in cats.

Such a shame, we really thought this landlord would make it as he did seem to be making an effort, though as with most of the others, we had no idea what he looked like. It was now the beginning of August.

We sat back and eagerly awaited the next installment in the saga of the pub. Sure enough it opened, yet again, ‘under new management’. This couple we recognised. They had a dog which they used to walk up the lane, we had definitely seen them before, so the conclusion was they were ‘stop-gap’ managers.

A notice appeared on the door ‘We Are Closed 3pm – 5pm’.  Sadly, judging by the absence of their outside light shining into our field at night, they were also closed from 9.30pm and sometimes even before that.

Another notice appeared on the door ‘We Are Closed 3pm – 6pm’.It was obvious things were not going well. The final notice simply said ‘We Are Closed’ and around 19th September they moved out. The pub was once more in complete darkness.

A few days later we noticed activity in the pub car park, a man with a van, so Peter went to investigate.

He was there on behalf of the brewery fitting mobile  burglar alarms to the holiday cottages. These had been built, at who knows what cost, on the side of the car park, by the last ‘proper’ landlord in 2003. They may or may not have contributed to his financial demise some 5 years later.

He told us another van would be coming later to collect the picnic benches from the beer garden.

So there we are, it looks like the pub at the bottom of the garden has been mothballed, or do I mean abandoned. A quick check on the breweries website showed no sign of it being offered for sale or rent as it had before.

I think we have witnessed the death of an English Country Pub.