The Constitution suddenly closed down in 2020

A BELOVED community pub that still stands empty three years after its abrupt closure has left former regulars and staff asking: “there was all this urgency – but for what?”

The Constitution Pub in St Pancras Way, Camden Town, was shut suddenly in February 2020, with staff recalling how they were given an hour’s notice before security began closing the premises.

This week, on the third anniversary of its closure, the pub still stands disused, despite reports that the Young’s brewery would reopen it last year.

Zoe Fraser, who worked at the pub for three years before it closed and lived in the flats above, said: “It was very heartbreaking, because my friends and I lived above the pub. The closure made us homeless and redundant at the start of the Covid lockdown. It was truly one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through.”

Before the takeover by the brewery, Ms Fraser said staff had been given verbal assurance that they could keep both their ­tenancy and job.

“On the day it closed, they gave us an hour to get all of our stuff and then said we had to contact them to collect anything else because they wanted to ‘secure the building’ and prevent access,” Ms Fraser said.

Former regular and pool player Tony Stevens said: “I was there the day they evicted two young girls on to the street, [staff] were there bawling their eyes out. It was all a bit brutal. There was all this urgency – but for what? For nothing. To be closed for three years.”

He added: “It was a real community pub. I had lots of friends there I don’t see so much now. It fractured a community.” Ciaran Turner, a musician who worked behind the bar at the “Con”, said: “This thing that was really precious to me and a lot of people was totally destroyed over night.”

“There was talk that if it did reopen, and it wasn’t the same pub with the same people [working there], we would boycott it – but they haven’t even been given that option because it hasn’t reopened.”

“These cultural institutions, they’re not built overnight. It takes years of hard work and building something as a collective. Once gone, they’re gone.”

Marie Phillips, who had worked at the pub since 1985, said: “I will never forget that day. It was so sudden, it really truly took a while to sink in.”

But Ms Phillips added Young’s was “doing what they had to do” because “it all needed rewiring, all the plumbing needed doing, it needed a major refurbishment.”

But she added that she used to make sure she didn’t walk past the pub because to see it was not ready to reopen again was too distressing.

“It does lead you to think: ‘Oh God, I hope it’s not going to fall down before they do something with it’,” she added.

A spokesperson for Young’s said: “When we acquired The Constitution, the pub didn’t meet health and safety standards which resulted in the immediate closure of the premises. We look forward to restoring this iconic canal-side pub and re-opening it to the community in late 2023.”