Owners of Britain’s wonkiest pub hired digger used to demolish it days before fire
AT Contracting rented vehicle from plant hire firm before major blaze, being treated by police as arson, hit historic building
The new owners of the Crooked House pub hired a digger several days before
the building burnt down, with the vehicle used to demolish the building.
AT Contracting – owned by Carly Taylor, who bought the historic pub in Himley, near Dudley in the West Midlands, in July – rented the digger from a plant hire firm a week before
the fire, which is being treated by police as arson.
It also emerged that the fire brigade’s attempts to put out the blaze were hampered by a large mound of earth that was blocking access
to the site when they arrived on Saturday night.
Former regulars and the local MP are demanding that the building, known as the country’s wonkiest pub after it was affected by mining subsidence in the 19th century,
is rebuilt brick by brick after the council said it was demolished without permission.
Dogs trained to detect accelerants have been to the site to help the police and fire brigade investigate the cause of the fire, which happened just a week after an application was made to give the Crooked House
listed building status.
On Monday, a large digger owned by Lyndon Thomas plant hire, based in Northamptonshire, was filmed flattening the burnt-out building, despite instructions from the local authority to pull down only a small part of the structure, which was thought to be salvageable.
The firm hired out the digger to AT Contracting, but Mr Thomas has criticised reports linking his company’s name to the controversy.
He told The Telegraph: “We are a family-run firm and we hired out the equipment to an existing customer who had all the necessary insurances and paperwork. We hired it out without a driver, and we had no idea what it was going to be used for.
“I can’t be held responsible for what he [the customer] does, but you wouldn’t believe the threatening phone calls we have received since this happened.”
Mrs Taylor, a 34-year-old former hair stylist, bought the 250-year-old building from Marston’s brewery in July. It had been listed for sale for £675,000.
The pub is accessed via a road owned by Himley Environmental, of which Mrs Taylor’s husband Adam, 44, was a director until November 2021 and which operates as a landfill site a short distance from the Crooked House.
The couple are current or former directors of 18 companies, which include property development and waste management firms. They had previously bought another pub in the area with the aim of turning it into flats.
Locals have said they heard a “party with loud music” at the pub on Saturday night, hours before the fire was reported. The fire brigade was called but could only get a third of the way up the mile-long road leading to the building because of a mound of earth blocking the road.
A watch commander at Tipton fire station said his firefighters had to use 40 lengths of hose to get to the fire because of the obstruction.
Eyewitnesses said security guards with dogs turned up at the site on Monday before the digger moved in and demolished the Crooked House.
Roger Lees, the leader of South Staffordshire Council, said that a representative of the landowners had agreed on Monday that only part of the upper structure of the front of the building would be removed to stabilise the rest of it, He said that at no point did the council authorise full demolition and “nor was this deemed necessary”.
He said the demolition was contrary to the Town and Country Planning Order 2015, and that the council’s lawyers were examining the evidence “with a view to taking enforcement action”.
Paul Taylor, from the Save the Crooked House campaign group, said: “I think the loss will be felt forever. Even if there’s a way to restore the building in some form, it will never ever be the original Crooked House. It will be a rebuild.
“People are very very upset. It was just one of those iconic things, it felt like it belonged to us, to the community, to the Black Country.”
Mr and Mrs Taylor have not so far commented.
