The Duke of Wellington, 1939 – courtesy of The National Brewery Centre, Burton on Trent

I have long admired The Duke of Wellington swaggering on the corner of Brune and Toynbee St, flaunting its eccentrically-pitched roof and tall chimney stack in the style of  a Tudor cottage like a swanky hat. It was always a pleasure to leave the clamour of the street and enter the peace of the barroom, where a highly concentrated game of darts was in progress.

Nick Harris, who ran the pub with licensee Vinny Mulhern in recent years, greeted me and explained that eighty per cent of the customers were darts players. “We’ve got so many teams, there are matches every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday,” he admitted to me, “I first came here as a member of a team to play in a match.”

There has been a pub on this site since at least the eighteen-fifties yet it closed forever last week, joining the sorry ranks of almost half the Pubs across the East End which have closed since 2000. Recent law permits alteration in use of pubs without the necessity of planning permission, generating an unprecedented number of closures, as pubs that are economically viable and valued community meeting places are snapped up by predatory developers, eager to shut them down and convert the buildings to other uses that will deliver a quick profit.

Already, the lettering has been removed from the fascia, the inn sign has been taken down and the hoardings have gone up. Problems began for The Duke of Wellington when property developers Mendoza Limited bought the freehold for fifteen million pounds a few years ago. As owners, they had the right to prescribe the list of suppliers that Vinny, the tenant landlord, could buy from. As a consequence, he had to pay £265 a barrel where he paid £130 previously. Meanwhile, Vinny discovered Mendoza Limited had acquired a string of twenty-seven pubs for ‘conversion,’ employing questionable tactics to further their purpose.

“They’re saying we’ve been buying from unapproved suppliers and they’ve sent in a stocktaker,” Nick revealed. I learned Vinny had his weekly rent returned the day after he paid it. “I think they are getting ready to send the bailiffs in to change our locks for not paying the rent,” Nick confessed to me, turning emotional, “They don’t care – they don’t realise how much it offends good honest people who are just trying to make a living.”

Despite a long campaign to save the pub, Vinny has now gone and Mendoza’s planning application has been approved upon appeal, granting permission to gut the building, demolish part of it and pack in as many pokey hotel rooms as possible, building upon the garden and adjoining land.

Vinny Mulhern, Publican

Nick Harris & Vinny Mulhern

Photographs copyright © Estate of Colin O’Brien

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