Way back when in the sunny long-ago I read an article which I thought was wonderful then and, if I could only find a copy, have no doubt would find just as wonderful today. It began:
“I sat down and wept when I remembered the lost pubs of Burslem, the demolished Star that stood where the Moonglow Ballroom stands now, on the corner of the street of the Preacher and the Tote office; it was a gaunt, dark building nicknamed the Star of Bethlehem, a grimey stuccoed star the colour of years of wet smoke. From outside it looked forbidding and empty, lit only by one or two naked electric light bulbs; its doors were difficult to find, its main door on the corner of the Square had been screwed down for some reason and on the inside covered with a piece of painted plywood. Only the side-doors would let you in and these were narrow and difficult to open. One was in Queen’s Street and the other in William Clowes Street, opposite the Dolphin… for all its dreary appearance, the Star was the highest drinking temple in the town; nothing has been the same since it was knocked down. No pub has been more lamented.”
The article was the “Lament for the Lost Pubs of Burslem” by Arthur Berry (1925-1994) and has always stood in my memory as the lodestone of elegiac writing.
It also stands as a fine description of the type of pubs that I love, particularly as it depicts a world before anyone had the foolish idea that it would be a good thing to install a TV in a pub and tune it to the bastard spawn of hell that is Sky Sports.
Portrait: Berry
Berry was many things, amongst other things a painter of some skill who took a load of his works to the dump (I think because he wasn’t sure what to do with them) and hence few survive. The Lament for the Lost Pubs of Burslem was originally a piece for radio for which it won a Sony Award in 1979 and it must have been in that year that I came across the text in print – I think (having spent a while googling) in the 20-27 December edition of The Listener for that year although I have a persistent memory of seeing it in a local CAMRA magazine.
In any event I do not have a copy anymore and am on the hunt for either the text or a recording of the broadcast (I believe BBC Radio Stoke issued it with some other material on cassette but I can’t track this down) and I’d love to get hold of one.
I have just ordered a copy of his autobiography – Three and Sevenpence Halfpenny Man – which also took a while to track down at a sensible price although AbeBooks came to my rescue.
Portrait 2 : Berry
Much of this information I have only found out today as I tried to track down more on the lament (and try in vain to find a copy). The next step has to be to try and find a catalogue or similar of his art if I can.
Meanwhile the days before christmas drag a little. The plan, such as it is, is that Amy and I take her laptop along to PC World to get it booked in for some maintenance and in the passing I get the last of the groceries from the supermarket.
That’s the theory. In practice Amy is still in the shower having not long got up (it is only 13.30 after all) and for the first time in a very long time I seem to have an incipient migraine for reasons which I can’t discern. It could just be that I’m feeling stuffed up and vaguely like the beginnings of a winter cold. Time will tell.
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