Three Tuns, No More...

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To paraphrase Alex Harvey of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, '...another pub dies in shame...'. The Three Tuns in Bishop's Castle, Shropshire, which we have known and loved since it first emerged from long disuse almost exactly thirty years ago, has closed again. As in so many like tragic cases, yet again it is an example of an erstwhile successful pub and community hub brought to its knees by a latter-day management powered by that fatal combination of hubris and a plain lack of understanding of running a hospitality business.The pub shut its doors around three weeks ago, amid the ongoing gradual dilapidation of the building's fabric and the business's poor performance over the last two or three years. It's owners, Heineken Star Pubs [really, I ask you...] are seeking a new licensee to take over the business.

Considering that Heineken SP were responsible for recruiting this last lot of misfits, who not only estranged the adjacent, ancient - established in 1642 - brewery [thankfully, for twenty years a separate enterprise, having plenty of outlets for its excellent ales] by focussing on Heineken products exclusively - only latterly, grudgingly allowing just one of The Three Tuns Breweries products back [and chilled for God's sake!] - but in doing so completely failed to gauge that their customer base - local and tourist alike - frequented the place principally because of the range and quality of The Three Tuns Brewery's products, with food being a secondary draw. That the footfall all but disappeared whilst the Nero in charge fiddled around with the place being a 'gastropub' [the food wasn't all that clever either], was of no surprise to any of us; but I-told-you-so's simply can't mitigate this absolute tragedy: some people should never be let anywhere the brewing or pub industry under any circumstances.

And yet these idiots will blame anyone and anything, other than their own poor judgement and lack of understanding of or empathy with their customers, for the failure and eventual closure of otherwise good and well-patronised pubs, countrywide. I hope that the quite rightly enraged local community and the council can muster sufficient resources to wrest control of this valuable institution from the corporate mentalists and return it to the town and its people's ownership once more...

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