Crooked House was scene of childhood memories and last place I took my dad – locals like me have had our heritage stolen
IT was a childhood memory I will always treasure and one shared by generations of youngsters from my Black Country home town.
My grinning dad — pint of bitter in hand — ushered me through the door of the famous pub and beckoned me towards a shelf sloping downwards on the wall of the bar.
He handed me a marble and invited me to roll it down the incline — but to my astonishment, it defied gravity and gathered pace as it appeared to move up hill.
Drinkers laughed and cheered as my mouth fell open before my dad sauntered to the bar to order me a Vimto and a packet of crisps.
This was the joy of the famous Crooked House, the world’s “wonkiest” pub, where mining subsidence created mind-boggling, Harry Potter-style illusions.
But this magical place is now a pile of rubble at the centre of a scandal after it burned down in a suspected arson blaze then had to be demolished hours later.
Police have launched a probe as intrigue swirled around the site at Himley, near Dudley. National outrage has erupted over the apparent destruction of a heritage property. Was it to improve access to a nearby waste disposal site?
But fury has been greatest among people from Dudley — like myself — left utterly shocked by the heartbreaking loss of this unique landmark.
I was 12 years old in 1973 when my bricklayer dad Henry first showed me the pub’s famous marble illusion.
He went on to regularly treat me to fizzy pop sucked through a straw in his Vauxhall Victor in the car park as sounds of pub chatter and chinking glasses drifted outside.
My sister remembers her first dates as a teenager there in the Seventies, and how the skewed beams and sloping floor left her feeling tipsy before touching a drink.
After I had my own children — twins in 1994 — I took them both to the iconic boozer and recreated my dad’s marble trick.
And the result was exactly the same a generation on — laughter and wonder and the repeated plea: “Do it again! Do it again!”
Years later, as my dad’s health began to fail in his early nineties, we returned to our favourite watering hole for one of his last outings.
Raising his glass after stepping up the slope into the bar, he cast his eyes around the oddly angled beams and said with a smile: “We’ve had some good times here.”
My family’s Crooked House backstory is one shared by generations of locals but the pub became a source of fascination across the globe.
Last time I was there with my dad, a coachload of Chinese tourists pulled up outside — and emerged from the mind-bending boozer scratching their heads.
The pub, at the end of a rough track through woods, was originally built as a farmhouse in 1765 before being converted into a pub called the Glynne Arms in the 1830s.
‘Sloping floors made you feel drunk’
Mining work caused one side of the structure to sink four feet lower than the other, leaving it leaning at a crazy 15-degree angle.
Renovators shored up the building with buttresses in the 1940s and it was eventually renamed The Crooked House — as it had been affectionately known by locals for years.
And its future seemed assured as it was listed for protected status just weeks ago.
Yet before the application could be approved, developer Adam Taylor, 44, and his glamorous wife Carly, 34, bought the pub from Marston’s brewery.
Just days later it had been reduced to a pile of rubble.
The much-loved hostelry was gutted by a suspected arson blaze last Saturday and its scorched remains flattened by diggers just 36 hours later.
Claims surfaced that firefighters had been hampered by a mound of earth dumped on the pub’s access road, although this could have been for security.
The Taylors were also said to be in dispute with the brewery over access to a landfill site run by Himley Environmental, in which Bentley-driving Mr Taylor has shares and where he is a former director.
Social media snaps later emerged of jet-setting former nail technician Carly on a first-class flight to Dubai — amid claims the couple had cashed in by gutting another pub.
The wealthy, high-living pair, who share a luxurious home near Lutterworth, Leics, have stayed silent since the furore erupted.
The pair may yet be able to explain their position but, in the meantime, there were yesterday growing calls for the pub to be rebuilt.
Former Crooked House regular John Millar, a 66-year-old retired Dudley Council chief officer, said yesterday: “Everyone who I know has a Crooked House memory.
“Marbles defying gravity, the sloping floor and beams at all angles which made you feel drunk before you’d touched a drop.
“It was a magical place and totally unique. People round here are absolutely furious.
“The people responsible should be made to rebuild it brick by brick — at their own expense.”