Dave, you're lucky.

My beloved Lewes Arms has fallen into insensitive hands; the emphasis is now on food although there's nothing like enough space to turn it into a restaurant, muzak has been installed and mobile phones are now allowed in the bars where once anyone using one would have been required to buy a drink for the entire pub. Many historic artefacts have disappeared and the lighting is bright enough for open-heart surgery to be conducted in there.

The new owners, Fullers, wanted to charge our 21-year old Lewes Arms Folk Club £50 for using the club room on a Saturday night and £75 for an all-day music workshop, despite the fact that the room only seats fifty at a very tight squeeze; we've been lucky enough to find alternative accommodation at the
Elephant & Castle, which has an excellent, much larger function room for which we aren't being charged at all.

The club was part of the pub's once-flourishing eco-system of small societies and dotty activities. As a result of its departure other things are under threat, notably dwyle flunking, because the new people don't understand how these groups are interlinked. The pub's unique atmosphere is being steadily eroded, despite its historic battle to get our local Harveys beer reinstalled in defiance of the then owners, Greene King.

One strange trend which seems common now is for a pub kitchen to be hived off to a separate company, which presumably pays a fixed rate to the pub managers. The result seems to be that an increase in food sales doesn't result in much or any extra profit for the landlord.

Valmai (Lewes)