Happy New Year to all!
Just before the holidays, I was off on the search for a very rare American duck, the Canvasback, which found itself in Abberton Reservoir, near Colchester, Essex, England.
The weather was mixed, as it usually is in the latter part of any year, although as the rain fell, I thought that not so many years ago it would all have fallen as snow.
Deciding not to drive home in the pouring rain, I stopped in a tiny village called Layer Breton — population 300 — not too far from the slightly large Layer de la Haye, which has a population of 1,800.
According to its civil parish, Layer de la Haye gets the first part of it name from the Norman French word for “owned by,” presumably by the De la Haye family.
I read online that "Layer" in Layer Breton’s name comes from the name of the river flowing through it, so who knows what the correct etymology is for either.
I stopped off at the Hare & Hounds public house, which is technically in the village of Birch, maybe 500 feet from the edge of Layer Breton, although its address says Layer Breton.
It has two double guestrooms available, which made me want to write about it even more.
At about 2:30 p.m., inside were seven or eight retired villagers. The landlady, Sharon, told me that the pub had reopened in September after a series of closures, reopenings, further closures and renovations.
Its latest reopening was on Oct. 14, and good luck to it, but it remains another pub under pressure.
According to magazine and website Drinks Business, 383 United Kingdom pubs closed down in the first six months of 2023. In 2022, that number was 386 for the same period. All things considered, both years were pretty identical.
Pubs are under real pressure due to a series of challenges such as a continued drift of people to cities, inflation, cost-of-living pressures and cheaper sources of alcoholic drinks from supermarkets.
Hotel restaurants and bars struggle from the same pressures.
Inflation is falling slightly after record highs for the past decade or so, but many in the hotel and hospitality industries say that while the overall rate if falling, that is not true for certain areas, many of which fall into their profit-and-loss baskets.
Two days after I visited Layer Breton, I attended a webinar on the subject on Dec. 14 hosted by business advisory AlixPartners. David Michels, chairman of business advisory Michels & Taylor and a former CEO at Hilton, said success in bars and hotel restaurants — and stand-alone, traditional public houses — comes from “hundreds of small details, such as product, portions, labor, kitchens you skill or deskill, when you are open and when you are closed. The answer is always more footfall, but this is so difficult.”
The U.K. government has set up a scheme called Retail, Hospitality & Leisure Business Rates Relief, in which pubs and related concerns are able to claim a reduction on business rates of 75%, up to £110,000 ($138,000) for a couple of full-year business years, but that scheme ends March 31.
What also was shocking in Layer Breton was that its church was subject to the same pressures.
Villages such as Layer Breton comprise of three things only — church, pub and community. Without a pub or a church, what are villages? Hopefully not a collection of strangers behind closed doors, but the possibility of this happening is very real.
The Hare & Hounds in Layer Breton also hosts the local post office — how wonderful but crazy is that? — and is also regarded as one of the main focuses of any community. It is open on Tuesday and Thursday mornings between 9 and midday, and it sets up in one corner of the pub.
Inside the Hare & Hounds, there was a huge poster for the campaign to save the local church, referred to as Birch Church, from being demolished. It has not been used for religious services since 1990, but Sharon said it remains a very much-loved landmark.
Therein lies the crux.
I bemoan the closure of independent bookstores, but I personally have limited funds to keep them open. The cost-of-living crisis does not allow a good number of people even to entertain the idea of helping out where they would like to.
The Save our Spire campaign for the church, St. Peter & St. Paul — the spire is taller than most and thus notable architecturally — says it might face demolition as early as next April if an alternative use cannot be found.
Perhaps a hotel brand and destination restaurant could lease the space, which is listed and thus, I assume, protected by law. But that chance is probably less than zero.
The owners of the church, the local diocese, and those charged with its preservation, Historic Buildings & Places, say the issue is cost.
They are no different from everything else struggling with rising prices.
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hotel News Now or CoStar Group and its affiliated companies. Bloggers published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to contact an editor with any questions or concern.