Sign of the Times

The local pub sign.

I think the first pub I ever went into was a Greene King pub. Growing up I thought all pubs were GK pubs, the majority on the local High Street and in the surrounding area certainly were. So it was a surprise when I first travelled north at the age of 18 to find that there were none in this part of the country. . No surprise, it was a Bury St Edmunds brewery mainly serving the east of England.

However, roll the years forward and it’s an entirely different matter now. Through constant acquisitions and mergers, especially since the 1990’s, it has grown and grown until it is now the largest pub retailer in the country, in 2019 itself acquired by a Hong Kong based property development company for £2.7 billion.

One of the controversies the company has been involved in as it has grown has been its record of rebranding older pubs, changing names and removing historic pub signs. I felt some attachment to it when it felt “local”, but that’s no longer the case.