The Grove Tavern in Dulwich faces demolition after 14 years closed

The Grove Tavern in East Dulwich is not coming back. The Dulwich Estate has submitted proposals to demolish the closed pub, which stands on the corner of Dulwich Common and Lordship Lane, according to Brixton Buzz.

For anyone who has walked past the boarded-up building in recent years, the news will hardly be a shock. It will still sting, because the site has a very long history as a place to drink.

A pub site with deep roots

Brixton Buzz reports that there has been a pub on this corner since the early 18th century, and possibly earlier. It started life as the Green Man.

By the early 19th century the corner was known as Bew's Corner. From the 1860s the pub became the Grove Tavern, the name it kept until the end.

Along the way it picked up the usual chapters of a British pub's later life. The building was branded as a Harvester Inn during the 1980s, before being taken over by the Stonegate Pub Company.

Why it cannot be saved

The building has stood in a state of disrepair since it suffered extensive fire damage in 2012. That is a long time for a corner pub to sit empty, and Brixton Buzz says it now has no chance of reopening as a boozer.

The reasons come down to the fabric of the place. Surveys indicate the former pub building is beyond repair and that its structural integrity has been compromised.

The Estate also looked at whether the building could return to some other commercial use. It concluded that this would not be viable, given the scale of work required and the wider economic climate facing hospitality.

That last point will resonate well beyond SE22. Pubs across London have had a hard time of it, and a building that needs this much work before it can trade at all is a difficult sum for anyone.

What is left

Brixton Buzz published a set of photographs of the building as the bulldozers prepare to move in. One detail stands out: an empty space where the pub sign used to hang.

It is a small thing, but it says a lot. A pub sign is the part of the building that tells you what it is for, and here it has simply gone.

What happens next

At this stage the Dulwich Estate has submitted proposals, so the demolition is a plan rather than something that has already happened. The reporting does not set out what might replace the pub on the corner, so there is nothing to say yet about the future of the site.

For now, the Grove Tavern joins the long list of London locals that survive only in memory, old photographs and the names of the corners they once held down. This one, at least, has a documented history stretching back through the Harvester years, the Victorian renaming and the days of Bew's Corner to the Green Man.

Sources: Brixton Buzz