The Goodrich Hotel in Caerphilly town has been demolished to make way for social housing.
The building, on Van Road, was demolished over several days to make way for 12 flats.
According to Cllr Richard Williams, Secretary of Caerphilly Local History Society, the Goodrich was purpose-built between 1903 and 1905 by a landlady who ran a pub of the same name on the site of Morrisons petrol station in Caerphilly town.
She moved the pub to profit from the workers of the new train engine works that employed 2,000 men, making Caerphilly a railway town.
It was named after one of Caerphilly’s wealthiest families, the Goodrich’s, who moved over from Virginia in America in the late 1700s.
This was a good pub and my local. If it wasn’t so expensive to run a pub and so cheap to buy alcohol in supermarkets this wouldn’t be happening. A landlord can tell you how much is too much but a supermarket will sell you enough beer to drown in.
Corporate megaliths:1 British culture: 0
Yes, and don’t forget the smoking ban and the rise of the ‘Pubco.’ I noticed that pubs up and down the nation began to close in late 2007. It is no accident that this is the year that the Smoking ban was implemented in Wales, followed by England one year later.
Whatever people’s views are on smoking in pubs it cannot be discounted as a major factor in the closure of pubs that had served their communities for decades, and in some cases centuries, through times of war and economic depression.
Another major factor is the ‘Pubco’ which extracts as much money as it can from the tennant and cares not one jot whether the pub stays open or is sold for a profit. Brewery owned pubs are different from this as the brewer uses them as a retail oulet for their product. Pubcos are not in the beer selling business, they exist solely to make money.
“The only constant is change” is a hateful saying but a very true one. I have been pleased with the success of pubs like the Leigh in senghenydd and the wingfield in llanbradach where the buildings were bought privately and refurbished with a multiuser theme. The wing is very much a free house with rooms, food, beer and community events as well as teams, I hope more pubs will revert back to this model and be as successful. But I knew there would be casualties along the way I just didn’t want it to be my local which was above all else an interesting building. It will probably be replaced by a block and render bland box, just like what ever will be in park lane.