Ex-actress Becky Newman tells Roger Protz about her transformation of a dingy Putney pub into a magnet for fans of cask ale
If I tell you I know a pub where cask ale accounts for 90% of beer sales, where even football fans have switched from lager to cask, and the smoking ban has had no measurable impact on trade, you may imagine I have finally left the real world for fantasy-land or am indulging in something stronger than alcohol.
But a visit to the Bricklayer's Arms, in
Waterman Street in Putney, south-west London, turns fantasy into reality. The pub's success is a remarkable story of triumph over adversity. It was closed for several years after it acquired a bad reputation. Eventually it was saved by a former actress with no previous experience of running a pub, and who now proudly displays the 2007 London Pub of the Year award from Camra, the Campaign for Real Ale.
Becky Newman has just turned 40. Originally from Bolton, in Lancashire, she trained at drama school and worked in television and theatre for 20 years. When acting work became thin on the ground, Newman joined her mother in London and became embroiled in the trials and tribulations of the Bricklayer's.
Genuine local
The pub, sporting a bright red-and-white exterior, is just a few yards away from the Thames, at Putney Bridge. It dates from 1826 and was popular in its early days with watermen and lightermen working on the river.
More recently, the Bricklayer's fell on hard times and changed hands repeatedly. When its reputation plummeted it closed and was put up for auction.
In 2002 it was bought by Becky's sister and brother-in-law, Helen and John Marklew, but they couldn't make the pub viable. So it closed again and Helen and John, who had young children, turned it into the family home.
Tragically, Helen died suddenly from a brain tumour. Newman told John she would raise the money to buy the Bricklayer's from him and allow him to continue to live there with his children.
How much does a Putney pub cost?
"A lot!" laughs Newman. "But the alternative was to turn it into another block of flats and lose one of this area's last genuine locals."
Some Young's pubs in Putney survive, but many others have been transformed into wine bars. Even the celebrated Star & Garter, just a step or two from the Bricklayer's, has become a nightclub.
"We had a great crowd in last night," she says. "Not just locals but newcomers to Putney who said it was marvellous to find a genuine local in the area."
The former actress admits her first day running the pub was more terrifying than a first night in the theatre.
"We opened on Boat Race day and people were standing 10 deep at the bar," she says.
"I knew nothing about real ale. My cellar skills were nonexistent, apart from knowing you had to hammer things into two holes in a cask."
John Marklew had introduced Timothy Taylor's Landlord to the pub and Newman immediately restored it. On a visit to the brewery's home town of Keighley, West Yorkshire, she noticed that every tied pub in the area had banks of handpumps serving the complete range of Taylor's beers.
Back in Putney, she installed more and more beer engines. Newman now has 10 and offers the full Taylor's range. "I put on Dark Mild in the middle of a heat wave, and it just flew out the door," she says.
She is full of praise for Taylor's staff, who have travelled to London to advise her on how to run a cellar geared to cask beer.
The 10 beer engines also enable her to offer beers from other craft breweries. "We do four new beers every fortnight," she says. "RCH and Ballard's are often on - and when we focused on Scottish beers, Orkney went like a bomb."
Newman's tiny cellar can only take nine-gallon firkins. She does 24 nines of Taylor's beer a week and "a firkin of Landlord - our best seller - lasts just two or three hours".
"The turnover of real ale is phenomenal," she says. " Real ale means lots of theatre - people chat about it. They tell us if they don't like a particular beer. We will give customers a taste of a new ale before they buy.
"We have to convert drinkers who have been brainwashed by mass advertising. If you do convert them, you've got them for life. Fulham football fans use the pub on match days. They used to drink a lot of lager, but now they've switched to real ale."
Dedicated to beer
The spacious pub, dominated by a horseshoe bar at the front, has bare brick and wood-panelled walls decorated with prints of the Thames and old Putney, two open fires and scrubbed wooden tables and seats. Regular beer festivals are staged in an outdoor drinking area at the side. This year, Becky has run festivals dedicated to beers from Yorkshire, Lancashire and - to underscore the importance of the Boat Race - Oxford and Cambridge.
Smokers have no special provisions. "This summer's bad weather hit us more than the ban," says Newman. "Seventy per cent of our customers don't smoke." What does she offer the 30% who do smoke? "They can borrow an umbrella from lost property!"
Newman's dedication to cask beer hasn't gone unrecognised: in 2006 she won Camra's South-West London Pub of the Year award. And last year, the Bricklayer's came out first from the 12 pubs shortlisted for the prize for the whole of London.
Multi-tasking
"Camra people don't look at pub cellars," says Newman. "They judge pubs on the friendliness of staff, atmosphere and beer quality. Their visits are supposed to be secret, but I've developed a good radar - Camra judges stand out a mile, as they order and sip every beer."
Other creature comforts are important, too. Newman offers Sunday roasts and simple pub grub for the rest of the week. Her life is demanding: she is a single mother with a young son called Luke, and is working on a radio programme about brewsters - women brewers - and is considering building a micro-brewing plant to supply the Bricklayer's.
But she doesn't work alone. Three members of staff are Patty Barbonne-Allen, from
Niagra Falls, Patty's husband Tim Allen, and Will Hoffman, who is learning cellar skills.
But Becky Newman is the real star of the show - a former actor who now treads the boards every day. She has saved a doomed pub and proved that dedication to good beer can pull in punters by the boatload.