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Last orders for Sevenoaks pubs? |
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Page 5 of 7
 Evelyn Miles, The Castle, St John's Hill
EVELYN MILES, The Castle, St John's Hill
Evelyn Miles of the Castle, a small Victorian Greene King pub on St John’s Hill, has been running her pub since 1975 – longer than anyone else in Sevenoaks – but doesn’t expect to still be behind the bar in five years time. “I hope not!” she says. “I am looking forward to retiring.”
Evelyn used to run the Castle with her husband Bob, who died in 2003. Now she’s on her own, struggling to stay in profit, and has found the drop in trade in the last few months particularly marked. “For the last month, it’s just been deadly on a Friday and a Saturday, which used to be the evenings I would take money,” she says. St John’s Hill has two pubs, two off-licences, three convenience stores and a garage all competing to sell alcohol within 500 yards of each other.
Her clients are mostly elderly and many of them smoke, which means going out on to the pavement as the pub has no garden. “The smoking ban was terrible,” she says. There are still men’s and ladies’ darts teams, but no pool team, and the pub doesn’t serve food. When Evelyn goes, it seems highly likely the pub will close. “I don’t (continued from page 15) know what the brewery will do with it. Once I’ve given my notice they will have to decide whether it is viable to stay open as a pub or sell it on.”
Would she recommend a life in a pub to a new licensee? “Not now. I would when we first came in, but it’s a lot of hard work for not much money. If anyone asked me now I would put them off.”
Evelyn says her accountant has been nudging her for years to retire, but she has kept on because she enjoys the atmosphere. “I haven’t set a date. I’m just waiting for the right moment. It’s a good thing it only has to support me, not a man and wife with a family.” She foresees a day when restaurants and bars will replace traditional pubs altogether.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 30 April 2008 )
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