Wonky walls and 250-year-old bricks: How will the Crooked House be rebuilt?

When it comes to rebuilding a pub from the ground up, Ben Martin and Tom Rees are the experts.

They own the Carlton Tavern – a London pub which was illegally torn down in 2015 by its previous owners who were then ordered to rebuild it “brick by brick”.

The Crooked House pub in Dudley faces a similar future after it was destroyed in a suspicious fire in August 2023. However, the project will be slightly more challenging as its wonky silhouette – a result of ground subsidence which caused one half of the building to sink – will need to be restored.

Rebuilding a pub from the rubble is a difficult task but it is one the owners of the Carlton Tavern in Maida Vale found immensely rewarding. Ben and Tom started their business, Homegrown Pubs, during lockdown and were on the hunt for their first project. When they heard about the Carlton Tavern’s destruction and the subsequent rebuild order, it felt like “fate”.

“We’d looked at a few different pubs actually out in the country at first – but then we saw the Carlton Tavern. Tom lives just down the road, and I grew up in this area and went to school just across the road and I remember drinking here a few times when I was 18, 19… So it was just a weird twist of fate,” Ben told the PA news agency.

“I think everyone thought we were absolutely nuts when we took on the pub as our first project – especially as it was during lockdown. No one could see the potential at first because it was literally a shell and a huge amount of work, but Tom and I saw the potential and just thought it was such a great opportunity.”

Israeli developer CLTX bulldozed the property after failing to obtain the necessary planning permission to turn the building into 10 flats. After a campaign by local residents and a legal battle led by Westminster Council, the property firm was ordered to build an exact replica of the 100-year-old property.

Ben and Tom took on the project in the early rebuild stages and after years of meticulous planning and hard work, the Carlton Tavern reopened in April 2021 – on the day lockdown restrictions were eased in the UK.

They wanted to incorporate as much as they could from the original building, so the pub maintained its historic identity.

“Parts of the original bar were salvaged, so there are sections that are pretty gnarly in terms of their kind of shape and style. Those parts were literally pulled from the rubble,” Ben said.

“The fireplace is original and the radiators are the original Victorian radiators from the old building so we deliberately haven’t tried to overdo it all, and make everything look brand new – we wanted to keep the character so that you really just feel like you’re in a building that has been here for 100 years.”

Whilst the owners prioritised recreating the atmosphere and preserving features of the original pub, they also made sure to inject their personality and unique style into the project.

“We have really personalised the interior and made it our own. There’s old family photos on the wall behind the bar – including a picture of my grandad playing in his old cricket team and we’ve also got the presents our friends and family gave to us on the day we reopened on display,” Tom said.