Spiritual Home to a Community

It may not look like much from the outside but this ambiguous looking tavern boasts a core of loyal customers who are at the very heart of the pub.

So strong was the feeling about the pub's name being changed from the Albert Tavern to the Pickled Newt that regular customers refused to call it by its new name and put pressure on the brewery to change it back.

The Albert Tavern, in Harrington Road, was originally an impressive three-storey inn which opened in 1869 and this structure remained until 1944.

During World War Two the pub took a direct hit from a VI flying bomb which not only destroyed the building but also devastated the immediate area.

The doodlebug bomb which hit Harrington Road and destroyed the Albert Tavern on 9th July 1944, was the 78th out of 142 VI's to strike Croydon.

The original damage report, held at Croydon Local Studies Library and Archive Service, states that the blast damage extended to a 400-yard radius.

Seven people died, including 73-year-old Annie Elizabeth Goodman and Bessie Herbert, 42, of the Albert Tavern. Warden Charles Edward Poole, 70, of Westgate Road, also died at the Albert Tavern.

The site remained as a bomb site for 20 years until Croydon's licensing bench approved plans to rebuild the pub in 1964.

Work began the following year and the new and improved Albert Tavern reopened in 1966. The new structure is typical of 1960s, post-war architecture.

One Albert regular told the Guardian: "I've been drinking here since before the war, I'm 78 years old and I can remember coming here as a child when I visited my grandparents.

"My grandfather was also a regular here and my uncle, who's nearly 84, still drinks here.

"I was called up for service during the Second World War and when I came back the pub was gone. The whole area had been completely flattened by a bomb. I heard that a lot of people were killed.

"I've always lived locally but when they changed the name to the Pickled Newt nobody liked it. In fact, people refused to call it the Pickled Newt. I always referred to it as the Albert."

For years locals continued to call the Pickled Newt by its former name and when the Magic Pub Company was acquired by the Greene King Pub Company the brewery went back to the pub's roots and changed the name back.

Colin Squirrell is a regular of 30 years and has also been a cleaner at the pub for the last 14 years.

He said: "This has always been a community pub. Generations of the same family have been drinking here."

"When it became the Pickled Newt it was very unpopular. What people don't realise is that the names of old pubs like this are linked to the history of the area."

"The Albert Tavern was first built in the time of Prince Albert and there was also a road of the same name nearby too."

"There used to be a lovely picture of Prince Albert, painted by a local artist, on the front of the pub but this went when the name changed."