Craig Douglas with wife Karen

• FOR at least three years you have covered the sad story of the multiple award-winning Bree Louise pub, which is to be demolished to make way for HS2 (It’s soul-destroying, say Bree Louise landlords as HS2 forces pub to close, January 18).

Like many people I occasionally drank there before catching a train out of London. The pub dates from at least 1856. For most of its history it was called the Jolly Gardeners. It looks like it was rebuilt in the middle of the 20th century.

Craig and Karen Douglas took over the pub more than a decade ago and renamed it the Bree Louise after their late daughter. They have earned many well-deserved tributes for turning it into a wonderful real ale and cider pub.

It is thanks to your tweets that I learnt January 27 would be the Bree Louise’s final Saturday. It was bitter-sweet: a wake for a much-loved pub, but also a celebration of the Douglases’ achievement.

I broke a journey from Cambridge to Oxford to be there. I was not alone. While there that evening I met a Brazilian couple who live in Oxford and had also come to London to say goodbye to a great pub.

Also there were Maria Carty and her daughter Michelle. The Cartys now live in Cockfosters, but Maria grew up in the Jolly Gardeners when her parents Michael and Myra kept the pub from about 1972 to about 1982.

Maria told me that in the late 1970s the pub and many neighbouring buildings were threatened with demolition. Some buildings were demolished, but the Cartys resisted and the pub was saved.

In 1978 the Cartys had the pub refurbished and the New Journal photographed the reopening. Maria brought with her a unique family album of the history of the pub.

It includes prints of your press photos, cuttings from your newspaper, family photos in the pub and on the roof, and a 1979 thank-you letter from the then brewers Watneys for reinvigorating the pub.

HUGH JAEGER
Park Close, Oxford