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| The Railway Hotel, Station r'd, Edgware. |
The place was huge, as you walked through the front door there was a bar room to the right and a lounge to the left with the bar itself forming the shape of a long unused staple bridging the two rooms. There was a huge kitchen central and set back between the rooms. The massive car park was located around the back, you could drive through and between ourselves and next door by turning left just after the bus stop and going through the tunnel. Some nice picnic tables and seating were out front. A function room which was accessible up stairs on the left of the building as we look here which took up half of the second floor, another kitchen there too and 4 lodging rooms that the staff had been using. Then there was a 3rd floor with the management accommodation. The cellars were like a rabbit warren, with 2 separate areas for the upstairs and downstairs bars, tunnels, storage rooms and so much space it was crazy. The restaurant next door (later an off license) which is the building on the right of the picture belonged to George Michaels' dad. Sounds lovely doesn't it?! There's a YouTube video made recently highlighting its current plight, I'm guessing when he mentions 2007 and closing, that was when I left, click on the link if you want a look The Railway Hotel, Edgware road
The only part of the pub that was trading when I rolled into London was the front bar. I'd got a van load of my stuff, a baby Cade and an unhappy Mrs Freer. The car park was overgrown and hardly usable but I found a spot and looked over my seemingly impressive new domain. However, it was far from idyllic. There was unused furniture and crap clogging up the lounge area, the kitchen was full of cooking equipment, fridges, freezers, and black bags full of rubbish blocking the room and causing chaos with access to the first flight of stairs up to the staff lodgings.
Three of the 4 rooms there were empty of people but still full of the crap they'd created and left. Mike, my one member of live in staff was in the fourth, There was a door through to the function room kitchen which was again full of unused equipment, so much of it, and barely navigable through to the function room itself. The function room was not quite so choked up as it was huge but it was still adorned with unused bits and bobs of pub furnishings and random general waste. I fought through the mountains of pub rubble and finally got to the upstairs accommodation and the first thing I noticed was dried blood splattered up the wall! Great... I felt the piercing stare from behind me of a now very unhappy and rightly concerned Mrs Freer. She didn't want to come here, didn't like it and wanted to go home. It certainly was going to be a challenge but my optimism was in full flow so I sent a somewhat reassured JJ back downstairs and out to get some essentials. I finished my grand tour by looking around the rest of our rooms, thankfully they weren't as bad and were at least empty and large, everything about the place was off the scale in size. I sat on the stairs, fag in hand and thought to myself: 'right then Royston, let's clean the blood away and we've got some work to do here'. I was absolutely buzzing, the place was so big, so full of history and had so many stories, I just wanted to make sure my story there involved giving it 100%.
The Sheer magnitude of the task was daunting. I knew it was down to me but everywhere you turned there was work to do. Every room was not just a challenge but in need of a miracle. Even the bar that was open was disgusting. It was one of those pubs that you wipe your feet on the way out! The carpet was so bad that if you stood still for 30 seconds you were in danger of staying there forever. I'd never seen anything so bad and Immediately got onto my area manager guy and ordered a skip with an estimation of 4 to 5 loads to be cleared.
It was overwhelming to be fair. I tried to prioritise and figured if I start in the car park then at least customers could park outside and get into the pub. Stage one, so to speak. But even this job was a ridiculous undertaking by myself. I vowed to get myself some help and did what I could, clearing roughly 15 spaces out of the available 30ish and piling junk high and ready for collection when my first skip arrived.
I'd met with Mike, lovely chap and a bit of a stoner. So much so that he had the whole floor emanating a discernible fragrance! He was worried about his job, understandably so but I couldn't exactly offer him many reassurances. I explained that I'd been sent down to tidy the place up and make it salable. He seemed genuinely amazed that the brewery thought it would sell and told me he thought they were closer to having it condemned (turns out it was a listed building and cant be demolished). His bar hours though were safe as I needed cover while I continued to try and get the place back to something like a pub of its size and history should be, or at least one that was slightly less distressed! There was no record of him living there so I agreed he could continue as long as he paid a bit of rent. I also gave him the option of switching rooms to any of the others but he was happy where he was for now. My other member of staff was Romana, a lovely warm and kind Slovak girl and she had a big muscly boyfriend called Laco. I had the same meeting again and assured her of continued part time hours but emphasized the lack of job security going forward. Just as importantly though, I got her to help me recruit Laco for some of the backbreaking work I had planned. early days but Things were progressing nicely.
The living accommodation was looking a lot better after a good clean and I'd been authorized to get professional cleaners in for the carpets (and walls). I'd been asking the regulars if anyone knew why there was blood splatter but so far got nowhere with that mystery. Cade was happy but me and JJ weren't in the best of ways and were looking into sending her home for a month as we did on a regular basis when she felt down with homesickness. There were arguments and tears but I was so distracted by the work that needed doing we didn't really spend that much time together. London was at least offering up potential new activities for her and we'd found out about a place called New Marldon that was supposed to be a mini Korea town. We planned a visit and tried to make things work.
My next mission was to get the lounge open. I figured with that available to use I could at least move the customers out of the bar and get it somewhere near decent. I'd enlisted Laco and between us we'd cleared most of the junk. The first skip was gone and we were well into filling number 2. My area manager, Christian I think he was called, had been dumping stuff here from other closed or sold pubs for a while so I'd been onto him and got some of the stuff taken away by him as well. we shuffled the odd bits of furniture around, made a cozy corner with some random sofas and chairs and it actually looked quite decent. I was only a week or so into the job but real progress was being made.
The carpet had to go, me and Laco ripped it out. It stank, it was rotten in places and stubborn to move in others. I guess it had been there for at least 50 years so it wasn't impressed by me rocking up and trying to dispose of it. I left the barely worn lounge side and cut it off just after the left side of the entrance, skip 2 was now good to go. There were bigger problems ahead though as it seemed to have been nailed down. There were literally thousands of small sharp protruding nails sticking up from the floorboards all over the bar floor. They took us forever to get out but with a claw hammer, pliers and sheer determination we strived and sweated through. I've never seen so many poxy nails but we cleared them and once the floor was clean and clear the whole place took on a whole new feel (and smell!)
My regulars were a fresh blast of multiculturalism. I had the old school geezer London lads, a fair few travellers came in from the nearby site on the A44, then there were the Europeans with friends of Romana and Laco coming in, originating from all over Europe. The London lads were hilarious and would always be very respectful, they called me 'Guvnor' which I must admit I quite liked, it felt like I was in Eastenders! One lad, Liam, came running in one day and asked me to hide a bag behind the bar. I just did it, thinking maybe he'd got his girlfriend a surprise or something. Then though, 5 minutes later two coppers strolled in, questioned and searched him, and then asked me if I'd seen any 'suspicious behaviour' from him! I said I hadn't so they thanked me and went on their way and he was instantly my new best mate, even promising to tell me the tale of the upstairs walls, after he'd been to see a man about a dog... now could he have his bag back please guv!
He came back later and explained that he'd had a fall out with a local gangster and had tried to hide from him in my accommodation one day. He got tracked down and grassed up (why he was so impressed I didn't grass I think) and the gangster guy had come upstairs with a knife and slashed him with it. It wasn't meant to be fatal but it was meant to convey a message that he wasn't to be messed with! Proper Krays style stuff going on and this was 2007! Mystery solved and my mind reassured a little that at least no one had been murdered upstairs!
I wanted to get the kitchen open, at least for bar snacks but Laco had a better plan. He convinced me that if we could get the function room operational he could fill it with the massive local community of Slovaks, Czechs, Polish and Romanians that just didn't have anywhere else to socialise together. We could offer bottled beers and cooked food from each country, alleviating homesickness for many (which i knew all about) and providing decent income as well. Seemed like a good plan but he also wanted to use the kitchen up there and so we had a mammoth task ahead.
I got the labrynth of cellars cleared as my next step because that was basically full of burnable or skippable rubbish. We pretty much filled skip 3 and burnt a million cardboard boxes and then got the link up to the function room working for the draft ales. there was a 5 and a half pint run up to there, meaning it took 5 and a half pints of liquid to fill the pipe from the cellar before it got to the pump in the bar of the function room, massive in pub terms. Everything was ship shape down there and we then sorted the spare staff lodging rooms out a bit. I knew Laco would lose interest in helping me when he had his part of the project completed so tried to get all the heavy work done before we started to focus on getting the function room open.
The downstairs bars were getting busier. I was putting a karaoke night on on Fridays and the travellers loved it. They were turning up in ever increasing numbers and filling the lounge on weekend nights. Blanket on the ground by Billie Jo Spears and Kenny Rogers and Dolly Partons' Islands in the stream were my new go to songs and things were going well! I needed more staff and when Romana came in with a friend who was absolutely stunning I tried everything in my power to get her on board. Martina joined our expanding team and was an instant draw for the European crowd (She was Czech) as well as being pretty enough to instantly win over the locals as well.
JJ was better but still not great. We'd done a bit of London tourism and been down for a Korean meal and some Korean shopping which helped but things were far from good. She was busy with a young Cade and I was busy investing myself with the constant improvements required by the pub. Money was coming in well, I was salaried and the bonus structure that had been set was based on the takings before I got there so I was smashing the bonuses as well with the lounge doubling our take, and the upstairs was taking shape and ready to improve things further.
We finally got upstairs finished, the kitchen operational and stocked it from shops all over london that Laco knew. The entrance was literally falling to pieces around the doorway but we bodged it and cleaned and tidied and moved the remaining unused bits and bobs down to the newly spacious cellar. We had a grand opening night, DJ and euro dance music, Slovakian sauerkraut (which was delicious) and a menagerie of continental beverages. It was amazing, It was busy, it was successful... Not Roy like at all! I staggered the closing times to keep my different clientele leaving at 30 minute intervals. 11 o'clock was the bar, 11;30 the upstairs and the travellers from the lounge at 12, mostly because there was no way they'd leave until last no matter which way round I planned it and this gave them a good 30 minutes of drinking up time to enjoy.
What, you might ask, could go wrong? I guess you need to pop back for part 2 to find out...
Roy never knew you were in the Raolway at Edgeware. I know the pub from when it was part of London Host, part of Grand Met. Looking forward to reading part 2.
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