Campaigners fighting to save a doomed historic pub have slated the council for needlessly wiping away Chester’s heritage and replacing it with ‘concrete and parking spaces’.
The Ship Victory has served locals since it was turned into an ale house during the Napoleonic wars, but it is now set to be demolished to make way for a new bus exchange.
Regulars and beer lovers battling to preserve the much-loved pub have now set up a petition calling on Cheshire West and Chester Council to re-evaluate flattening the pub and to make-up for years of ‘failing to integrate’ historic buildings and landmarks and destroying the city’s ‘architectural identity’.
The £10m bus exchange on Gorse Stacks will be the fourth bus station in the city in less than 50 years, having already moved from the Town Hall Square to Delamere Street and then to its current home off Hunter Street.
But CWaC say they take the conservation of Chester’s heritage very seriously and claim they looked at 14 potential sites for the grass-roofed interchange, but ‘after careful review’ the site, which is a conservation zone, was chosen as the best option.
Campaigners for the Ship Victory, who have even tweeted pub landlord Al Murray for his support and have more than 400 followers on their social media site, have slated the authority for their plans to bulldoze the pub, which they say has survived for more than 200 years despite all the shops and pubs around it being demolished.
Around 250 people have already signed the petition which calls on CWaC to ‘merge’ the pub into the plans, and not to persist with the ‘needless destruction’.
“Since the 1960s, in the so-called name of progress, these buildings have been totally wiped away and replaced with concrete and parking spaces, joining the devastating multitude of other such destroyed historical structures across Chester, resulting in the heart-rending loss of much of the city’s former glory,” the petition reads.
“The plight of The Ship Victory is representative of that of many other Cestrian buildings and it is unfathomable to think that Cheshire West and Chester Council would act against the wishes of the citizens it serves and continue to eradicate such precious embodiments of Chester’s history still further.
“Cheshire West and Chester Council must now re-evaluate its plans to demolish The Ship Victory, listen to the voice of the citizens, and act to cap the damage already done to our heritage.”
Campaigners for the historic pub, known as the ‘Little Pub with the Big Heart’ after regulars raised over £107,000 for a charity set up in memory of the former landlord’s daughter, are still awaiting the outcome of their appeal to the Ombudsman after CWaC refused to list the building as an asset of community value.
A spokesperson for CWaC said: “The council takes the conservation of Chester’s unique built heritage very seriously as is evident from work that has been done in recent years on projects from the amphitheatre, the city walls and the development of the former Odeon Cinema to provide Chester with a new cultural centre.
“Whilst we appreciate that the Ship Victory was appreciated by some local residents, it is not a listed building.
“The requirement to find a new site for a modern bus interchange capable of handling the vast majority of local bus services means that it will need to be demolished as construction work on the new bus interchange begins this summer.”
