Campaigners who want to see 'Britain's wonkiest pub' rebuilt brick by brick visited London to see a pub that was and were also hosted by Kingswinford and South Staffordshire MP Mike Wood
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00:00So we're at the Carlton Tavern doing a visit and we're here with Ben at the back, that's the man with the beards.
00:04He's actually one of the owners of the Carlton Tavern and he runs it day in day out.
00:09So he's going to give us a quick walk through and you can see how amazing this pub has been rebuilt.
00:15So let me just flip the camera around.
00:17Okay, so this is the old function room, the tea room as it says on the outside.
00:23And this was completely demolished, literally totally floored.
00:27So all this is rebuilt pretty much, there's not really a lot of original material in here.
00:32All the furniture you see and all the lighting we put in, they've obviously bought that.
00:36So, you know, so it's kind of all stuff that we went out to cleanse again.
00:40All the lighting, we tried to be sympathetic in terms of the lighting.
00:43Bring it down because it's built so much of a barn, being more of a dining area.
00:47These were a big buying contention for Heritage England because of the arches.
00:53So the builders kept coming back and getting the right curve of the arch.
00:57So when they were referencing photos, they kept coming back and changing because the curve wasn't quite to their satisfaction.
01:04So this was a bit of extra work.
01:07You can see they kept coming back and changing slightly.
01:09But other than that, this was completely rebuilt from scratch, this room.
01:14And no, I would say, no real original materials in here.
01:18This is our electric, this is my friend, I've had for many years.
01:23I think this was part of the original feet, that's why it's a bit wobbly.
01:26I'm trying to fix it, it keeps breaking.
01:29And then when you come in here, this bar was the original bar.
01:34So they salvaged this from the rubble.
01:37As you can see, it's got all the nice looks and shapes on it, which is a beautiful piece of work anyway.
01:43And some of the, like, this arch for the doorway is original, that back part piece is original.
01:50The fireplace is also original.
01:58This has got to be refurbished recently.
02:00This surround is original, but a lot of this was done, but I've done this literally the last two months, just because it was crumbling and falling apart.
02:07And the interesting bit is on those bits of panning, you can see where some of the original wood is, and some of it isn't.
02:13So where they've salvaged bits, they've done their best to create some of the original parts, which is quite a nice touch.
02:19So you can see that this gnarly piece of wood is real, and that is, well they've obviously put this in for new.
02:25Which gives it a load of character, I think, which is fantastic.
02:32That ceiling is amazing.
02:33Yeah, I mean, he's done an amazing job with the moulding.
02:35So obviously none of this has existed.
02:37He's hand-created all of these mouldings based on photos, stock photos that they had from before.
02:43So, and yeah, it looks fantastic. It's a beautiful ceiling, isn't it?
02:46It really is a wonderful room.
02:47Brilliant.
02:48And the idea of the aesthetic behind this is we wanted to create a room that felt like a good old English booth.
02:55So it kind of gives you that feel of the old thick seating, and the oxblood colours, and the schemes, and the wingbacks.
03:01So it kind of gives that feel of walking into an old pub.
03:04That was the kind of idea of the design of this room.
03:06And the radiators are real as well.
03:08They're old school radiators.
03:09Which do work.
03:12Yeah, they're good, aren't they?
03:13Yeah.
03:14And we didn't want to paint them up, so we left them.
03:15We left a lot of the stuff because it feels like the aesthetic film.
03:22And then coming through to this room.
03:24Again, the original parts.
03:26This room, again, pretty much, not a lot of it was original.
03:31That back bar is original wood panelling.
03:33Slightly different, we had to change it a little bit.
03:37And the staircase going down.
03:38This was, this was, managed to stay up.
03:42And all these staircases, all original.
03:44And all the way down to the toilets, this was original.
03:46We've done a bit of work on them.
03:48But the rest of it in here was all we did again.
03:51The rest of it in here was all we did again.
03:54And again, because we knew we'd get a bit more groups in this room.
03:58We made it feel a little bit more contemporary.
04:00Although still using 1920s lighting.
04:02And all the 1920s style furniture.
04:04But we knew there'd be like more of a group.
04:06So we put like these beautiful big poses on there.
04:08Which is, you know, we searched high and low for all this furniture.
04:11Because we wanted to make sure it was aesthetically pleasing to the public.