One of the UK’s oldest pubs has been forced to close
Some of the most iconic pubs in the UK have earned their glory by simply being around for a really, really long time. Our isles are overflowing with ye olde establishments with tenuous links to historical figures (pint in a boozer Sir Francis Drake may or may not have sat in once, anyone?), but some are really special, and deserve credit for weathering the storm of hospitality throughout multiple centuries.
One such spot was the Hole in the Wall, Torquay’s oldest pub, which had been serving pints since 1540. Despite surviving wars, crises, pandemics and the shifting fortunes of the hospitality industry for nearly 500 years, it tragically closed its doors on April 13.
Complete with cobbled floors and wooden beams, the Devon watering hole was famed in the area for its daily live music and local brews. It opened in the same year that Henry VIII married and subsequently divorced Anne of Cleves, and its first customers were smugglers and pirates.
After nearly half a millennium, the establishment was forced to shut this month due to the rising costs leading to hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of debt, according to its 81-year-old landlord, Richard Rossendale-Cook. Speaking to ITV News last month, he stated: ‘I'm very, very sad, of course, I'd like to carry on. But unless somebody comes up - a Russian oligarch or someone will give me £360,000 to go and pay off the bill, you are going to shut and that's the end of it.’
The pub’s closure was officially announced on March 26 w