Striking Camp

The Old Camp House at Camp Hill

We used to have a really enjoyable time at Scout camps.  New places to experience, new skills learned, bad old jokes we'd laugh ourselves silly over.  And if we didn't return home thoroughly dirty, nobody would believe we had actually been on camp.  That was true in another way too.  At the end of camp and the final campfire singalong, we would share in the task of striking camp, until there was nothing left of the site to prove we had been there, except the memories.

A thriving Camp PH

Soon that will be the case with The Camp public house.  Just the memories, and of course the photos. Not just the pictures of the demolition, but of the social events which were based there in its heyday of the 1920s and 30s.

The pub's beginning began a few hundred yards along the road in now-demolished premises in what had been ambiguously called, until 1914, the Old Camp (Beer) House – was it the Camp, the beer or the House which was old?  When McMullen's purchased it from Adey & White (who had acquired it from Thomas Kinder and who knows who before that) the building was in a decrepit state.  It was purchased by McMullen's specifically to have a license in place with which it could serve the new and growing Camp district.

Demolition begins.  COURTESY VIC FOSTER

Purchasing a portion of the Oaklands Dairy land a fine new building was erected.  Although the sign mistakenly assumed the name Camp referred to a Roman temporary settlement, the public house came to be a focus for the maturing district.  Even the library van pulled up on its courtyard each week.

However, the heyday came and went, and in recent years trade has limped along.  Given the distance to other pubs good organisation might have  re-invigorated good atmosphere once more and re-grow  a quality business.  Surely that would have been worth saving a fine building for.  A local group, though, did not stand a chance through the Community Asset route; there was just no time.

The machinery is on site, floorboards have been removed, presumably for onward sale, and gradually evidence for a century-old local pub will disappear.  It will, of course, require much more striking (of hammers and machines) than we did at other camps, but eventually there will be nothing left, nothing to remind us of its presence.

Arriving in its place will be a three-storey mass containing two dozen flats.  Should we be concerned?  About the loss of a quality building, yes.  Would it have been suitable for conversion?  Possibly.  About the loss of a location for people to meet?  Most definitely.  But there is a record of photos and of memories, so that is something.  Time moves on and we have to accept people need homes.  Perhaps, the new development will have a name which reflects its past in this place.  In such a  transition period the site will deserve that at least.  Any ideas to offer the development company?

What is coming?   Will there be a name?