Have campaigners won The Duke of Hamilton battle?

Published: 22 July, 2010
by DAN CARRIER

A BRIEF ceasefire in the battle to save a 300-year-old pub has been called after owners withdrew a planning application to turn it into two luxury homes.

The Duke of Hamilton, in New End, Hampstead, is due to close at the start September when the current landlord’s lease runs out. But this week it emerged the Wellington Pub Company, who own the building, have informed Town Hall officials they are withdrawing proposals to build homes on the site.

A campaign to safeguard the pub’s future led to more than 500 people signing a petition and around 300 writing directly to the council’s planning department. 

Landlord Michael Wooderson has unleashed a stinging attack on those who voiced concerns, claiming many were “jumping on a bandwagon” and were hypocritical as they had never drunk there. Mr Wooderson, who has run the pub for more than 20 years, said: “I reckon I have around 170 customers. I know their names and what they drink. Yet I hear 700 people signed the petition and wrote to the council. A lot of these signatures were collected on a Saturday morning on the high street, and are people who don’t ever come in.” 

He added: “The fact is the people of Hampstead do not use the pubs. There are 87 homes in the old hospital directly opposite me. Not one of them is a regular customer.”

Town Hall planning officers, in a letter to ward councillors, said the owners withdrew the plans as they were advised they would be turned down on three counts: the change of use from a pub to homes, alterations to the front of the pub, and the ash tree in the back yard being a vital part of the streetscape.

Hampstead Town Conservative councillor Chris Knight said: “This is just a one nil lead. They will come back with another application – I am certain of that.”

In a further twist, potential Duke saviours Paul Davies and Kirk McGrath, who run Kentish Town’s Pineapple pub and Belsize Park’s Sir Richard Steele, say they are ready to step in.

Mr Davies said: “We are interested – we’d take on the lease, or buy it outright.”

He added that he feared the pub would simply be closed and boarded up until people had lost the will to fight for it to be reopened, and then a new application for homes would go in.

The Wellington Pub Company declined to comment. 

• Middle distance runner David Bedford, who set world and British records in the 1970s and drinks in the Duke, is hosting a campaign meeting on Saturday morning at the Magdala pub in South Hill Park, South End Green on Saturday at 11am for all those interested in the campaign to save the Duke.