Alockdown project for Janet Griffiths’ husband ended up becoming the local community hub…
Upending a piece of wood, I hammered out the old nails embedded in it. Each one satisfyingly dropped into a tin at my feet, ready to be recycled.
Aretired teacher, I was rolling up my sleeves for a project with my husband Tim, a former architect illustrator. We had decided to build a memorial three years ago when his mum passed away.
Tim, now 68, had grown up with a home bar where his parents hosted friends and we decided to make our own version in our back garden in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands.
Many traditional pubs have closed in recent years. Our nearest pub serving Tim’s tipple of real ale is more than two miles away.
Why not make a memorial and pay homage to traditional British pubs at the same time?
Tim built a six-foot long timber frame in our garden, insulating it with reclaimed polystyrene. Afriend let us have two tonnes of pallets from his business. We’d break up the pallets by hand, cut them to length and I’d stain them all before Tim nailed them back together.
We then had someone come in to upholster a bench that seats six.
In all, our back garden pub took two years of work and cost £5,000 – far cheaper than if we’d outsourced labour or bought wood.
“Why don’t we name it the Smuggler’s Notch?” Tim suggested when we’d been through countless names with nothing feeling right.
Smuggler’s Notch is an area in Canada where liquor was smuggled to the US during prohibiti
