Passing of The Crown
Barry Phillips
For decades, The Crown, a Victorian-era public house in Corporation Street, Birmingham, has been a haunt of the city’s journalists. Now, after 134 years, it has closed down. Here, one of its “regulars,” former Birmingham Evening Mail journalist Barry Phillips (pictured) rolls back the years
“Members of Midland Independent Newspapers Pensioners’ Association, after two decades of enjoying its spacious surroundings and good service in a dedicated area of the inn, will need to find a new venue with the closure of The Crown in Corporation Street, Birmingham.
Owned by the city council, the Victorian premises has been operated on a lease by Stonegate – Britain’s largest pub group - for the last nine years, the company having taken over the business from long-time tenants M&B on the remainder of a now expiring 30-year lease.
The Crown, a listed building, was built as a hotel in 1888 close to many shops, offices and the law courts which brought a steady trade to its bars and for years to a silver service first floor restaurant. Until now the inn had a ground floor food service supported by a varied menu, and one bar. A future re-opening is not ruled out.
Besides city businessmen, lawyers and other justice professionals, the Crown enjoyed a brisk passing trade from witnesses and others interested in legal cases, and being on the doorstep of the Birmingham Gazette and Despatch newspapers between the 1920s and 1960s it became a venue for their staff until their merger into the Post & Mail.
Post & Mail pensioners celebrating the 100th edition of their newsletter in 2019
Dorothy Durrant, who worked on the Despatch from the 1950s recalls the upper floors in good condition with a diner’s bar, and the entire pub thriving. Post & Mail sports groundsman Graham Mapp, when working for the parks department, attended meetings of the National Association of Groundsmen on the first floor.
I first used the “Red Room” side bar, down three steps from the main lounge and with a side entrance from Newton Street, in the late ‘40s and remember the many characters who gathered in the Crown and framed caricatures of senior judges on the wall of the main entrance corridor.
Customers included the Winters family who ran the vegetarian cafe and specialist food shops next door, the city pathologist, various off-duty police officers, and the Despatch’s crime reporter Stan Staples while “The Dive,” subterranean and with a back entrance, was handy for sub-editors taking a five-minute break.”
Until a suitable permanent “home” is found, members of MIN Pensioners’ Association will meet at Wetherspoons, known as the Square Peg, situated on the ground floor of the former Lewis’s building in Corporation Street.
