Wonky walls and 250-year-old bricks: How will the Crooked House be rebuilt?
When it comes to rebuilding a pub from the ground up, Ben Martin and Tom Rees are the experts.
They own the Carlton Tavern – a London pub which was illegally torn down in 2015 by its previous owners who were then ordered to rebuild it “brick by brick”.
The Crooked House pub in Dudley faces a similar future after it was destroyed in a suspicious fire in August 2023. However, the project will be slightly more challenging as its wonky silhouette – a result of ground subsidence which caused one half of the building to sink – will need to be restored.
Rebuilding a pub from the rubble is a difficult task but it is one the owners of the Carlton Tavern in Maida Vale found immensely rewarding. Ben and Tom started their business, Homegrown Pubs, during lockdown and were on the hunt for their first project. When they heard about the Carlton Tavern’s destruction and the subsequent rebuild order, it felt like “fate”.
