The United Kingdom has over 60,000 pubs. One of their great joys is their sheer variety. They range from simple rural pubs to late-Victorian extravaganzas, from the genuinely old to the aggressively modern, from urban back-street boozers, through suburban estate pubs, to picture postcard rural idylls. Every architectural style is represented, be in Art Nouveau or Art Deco, high Gothic or post-war Brutalism.
CAMRA is wholly committed to doing all it can to protect our dwindling stock of intact historic pub interiors. We have a Pub Heritage Group made up of CAMRA members who are passionate about protecting and promoting our historic pub interiors. Some members of the group are recognised architechural and pub historians.
The Group maintains the National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors which is a list of those interiors that have remained intact for a long time and/or have features of exceptional historic or architectural importance.
The Group is also developing Regional Inventories of Historic Pub Interiors listing interiors which, whilst not in the absolute top drawer, are still rare and precious survivals.
We give pubs which appear on the Inventories the title of 'True Heritage Pub'. We use that term throughout this website and also in the True Heritage Pub guides, our written pub heritage publications.
Whitelocks, Leeds - Picture: Michael Slaughter
What is saddening, though, is how very few of our pub interiors are the same now, or nearly so, as when they were built. More often than not, you enter a pub with an unspoilt “period” façade only to find the trashed or the compromised awaiting you. Our list of True Heritage Pubs in Peril demonstrates that many nationally important interiors are currently at risk. There are many challenges associated with preserving our heritage pubs.
Another of the Group’s aims concerns Pubs as Listed Buildings; getting pubs statutorily “listed” as being of special architectural or historic interest affords them significant protection from insensitive development.
Our website also contains a glossary of architectural terms which commonly arise in pub descriptions plus suggestions for further reading about historic pubs. “Architrave”, “Corbelling”, “Terrazzo” – what do they mean? Find out in our glossary of architectural terms relevant to pubs.
Grill, Aberdeen - Picture: Michael Slaughter