Until recently, I’d never been through the doors of the Winslow Hotel to see, close-up, all the rich history and football nostalgia that makes it clear this isn’t just your ordinary pub.
Over the years, however, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve looked up at its imposing, photogenic features and felt a certain kind of respect for its close proximity (we’re talking just a short throw-in) to the walls of Goodison Park, Everton’s home stadium.
You didn’t need to be an Evertonian to admire that red-bricked facade or get a momentary thrill from the smell of beer fumes and all the excited chatter coming from inside. What a place. And what a story given that it was built in 1886, older than the football ground that was built directly next door.
There was something profoundly sad, therefore, to learn that ‘The People’s Pub’, as the sign says, has decided it’s time to call last orders.
Everton’s move to a new stadium, two miles west, has had such an impact on business that the Winslow’s general manager, Dave Bond, is to pull down the blue shutters for good. A farewell bash is being arranged, with January 24 pencilled in, and various former players will be there to ensure the place gets the send-off it deserves.
Dave Bond, the general manager of the Winslow Hotel (The Athletic)
After that, however, who knows what it will become? Apartments, probably. Offices, at a push. Or maybe it will just be boarded up and sit vacant for a few years. Either way, a piece of history is being lost, and we are reminded again about the collateral damage whenever a football club relocates.
A few years ago, I took a walk around the streets near Manchester City’s old Maine Road ground and, within a half-mile radius, I’d worked out that at least 18 pubs had been lost since the club moved into a new stadium in another part of the city.
The Parkside, the nearest pub to Maine Road, had been turned into flats. The Clarence had become an Indian restaurant, and the Hardy’s Well, a 180-year-old institution, was just a boarded-up shell. The Welcome had been converted into a dentist’s. An Aldi supermarket stood where drinkers used to congregate at St Crispins Social Club. The Beehive, the Sherwood, the Huntsman, the Talbot, the Whitworth, the Great Western, the Albert, the Gardeners Arms, the Osborne, the Lord Lyon, and so many others, are all now ghost pubs.
None of these places, though, had the same kind of football history as the Winslow, judging by the story Dave told me when he opened the doors to The Athletic and recalled a conversation he’d had with one of the matchday drinkers.
“It must have been about 10 years ago,” he began. “I was speaking to an elderly guy, well into his 80s, who was sitting in the bar with his son, his grandson, and his grandson’s wife, who was pregnant. That was four generations, alone. But the old man was telling me that when he was a very small child, going back to the 1930s, he could remember being brought in here by his own father.
“They were here one day when a game was on and, at half-time, this kid could remember all these men in shorts and socks and football boots coming through the door. That was the Everton team. It was half-time and they had come across the road for a quick half-pint before the game restarted.”
A few years back, the Winslow was named by FourFourTwo magazine in a feature about five of Britain’s best football boozers. Dave posed for a photograph and the flag behind him read: “Everton ale is not bitter – it’s better.”
I also suspect the demise of such a football institution will strike a chord with a lot of non-Evertonians, whoever they may support, given that the requirement of being a football fan often involves a matchday ritual that understands the importance of a favourite watering hole.
Perhaps you’re an Arsenal fan and remember the days at Highbury when drinkers in The Gunners, right next to the old East Stand, could leave within two minutes of kick-off and still get to their seats in time.
Arsenal fans drinking outside The Gunners pub near Highbury (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
Maybe you have admired the old Baseball Ground turnstile at The Neptune in Derby. Or maybe you’re a follower of Rangers, and you have had a pint or two beneath the Jim Baxter-stained-glass window of the Louden Tavern.
Other shouts will inevitably go out to The Strawberry next door to Newcastle United or The Colliery Tavern beside Sunderland’s Stadium of Light. But there isn’t really a football club out there that doesn’t have a pub or two, old or new, where supporters can feel aligned to the team’s history and everybody seems to have a shared purpose.
Newcastle fans in The Strawberry pub (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
And so, I set off for Merseyside to pay my respects to the Winslow and pulled up a seat beside the varnished bar where generation after generation of Evertonians have downed an ocean’s worth of pre- and post-match pints.
On the outside walls, there are blue plaques in honour of the two former landlords — Jack Borthwick, 1921-26 and 1938-42, and Norman Greenhalgh, 1951-56 — who had previously played for Everton.
Everton matchday outside the Winslow Hotel (Dave Bond/The Winslow Hotel)
Inside, there are bars named after Howard Kendall and Neville Southall, and all the unpretentious charm that you would probably imagine. Framed pictures adorn the walls to celebrate past glories and club legends. There are murals and flags and, behind the bar, scarves for ‘North American Toffees’, ’Dutch Everton’ and ‘Irish Toffees’.
It hasn’t been used as a hotel since the 1940s and, according to Dave, it isn’t just a pub, either. He calls it an events venue, hosting christenings, wakes, birthday parties and other occasions. But it feels like more than that, too. It is a museum, an art gallery, and a saloon, all in one. Theo Kelly, an Everton manager in the 1940s, slept upstairs. And, yes, that is — unexpectedly — a painting of David Bowie on the far wall. He’s in his Aladdin Sane album pose… wearing a 1970s Everton shirt.
Dave has been an Everton fan since 1976, aged nine, following the team from his childhood home in County Clare, Ireland, and tuning into his first matches via the faint, crackling airwaves of an old long-wave radio his mum had found in the attic.
He opens the shutters with the biggest set of keys I have ever seen and, to begin with, we talk about his friendship with Kevin Campbell. A photograph on one wall shows Campbell — pinstriped suit, dotty bow tie, beaming smile — pulling pints behind the bar. A flag in the window pays homage to the former Everton, Arsenal and Nottingham Forest striker, who died, aged 54, last year.
“Kevin was often in here,” says Dave. “He came in one time to watch Arsenal play Liverpool on the big screen. He was with a friend, a Liverpool fan, and they had a bet of £1,000 on the match. Arsenal won. And that was Kevin’s money to do whatever he wanted with it. What did he do? He put it behind the bar to pay for everyone’s drinks. He loved it here. He’d get mobbed, but he had time for everyone.”
It’s only a short walk along Goodison Road to the statue of Dixie Dean, Everton’s record goalscorer. The pub sign is another tribute to the local hero, a regular at the Winslow while he was living among the tightly packed terraced streets surrounding the stadium.
A view from the bar inside the Winslow Hotel (Dave Bond/The Winslow Hotel)
Alan Stubbs, the former Everton centre-half, described the Winslow recently as being, unofficially, “the players’ lounge” before Goodison Park introduced its own.
Various ex-Liverpool players have also been made welcome from time to time. Ian St John and Steve Staunton were among the visitors one day. Dave, feeling mischievous, ushered them towards a window seat and what, on the face of it, seemed a prime spot.
What his guests didn’t realise was that they were sitting beneath two pieces of wall art, each containing a quote, to honour Gordon West and Brian Labone, popular players from Everton’s past.
Labone: “Don’t forget, boys. One Evertonian is worth 20 Liverpudlians.”
West: “I know I am surrounded by Evertonians because you are all beautiful people. Kopites are all ugly b******s, aren’t they?”
Walk around Goodison now and there is still a hum of activity. The stadium is occupied by Everton’s women’s team, as well as hosting men’s under-21 matches, and that at least has brought a bit of revenue to the Winslow. With the drop in attendances, however, it is only a fraction of what it used to be.
In recent seasons, Dave has tried opening his premises to away supporters attending Liverpool games. Special events were arranged for Borussia Dortmund fans, as well as those of Rangers and Atletico Madrid. Two busloads of Arsenal fans dropped in before their last game at Anfield and seemed particularly impressed by the tributes to Campbell, who started his career with the London club.
Realistically, though, it was the beginning of the end for the Winslow as soon as Everton confirmed they would be upgrading to a new stadium. Since then, it has been a slow death.
The loss of matchday revenues since Everton moved away from Goodison Park has cut deep (Dave Bond/Winslow Hotel)
Dave tells the story about having a meeting in 2019 with Everton’s then chief executive, Denise Barrett-Baxendale, and pitching the idea that the local businesses — the pubs, takeaways, fish and chip shops and so on — could go with them to Bramley Dock. His suggestion was that the club could lease plots of land directly beside the stadium. “It fell on deaf ears,” he says, sadly.
Instead, he is opening another place, Dixie’s, on Dickson Street, close to the new stadium, and plans to take a lot of his memorabilia with him. But it will be a wrench, to say the least, when his current business closes for good.
“In 1892, when the first-ever game at Goodison was played against Bolton, a local artist sat on the embankment to draw a sketch,” says Dave. “That embankment is now the Bullens Road stand. The artist’s sketch was done in charcoal. It’s a piece of history from the very first game and, if you look closely, you can see the windows of our three turrets in the background.
“We have been here 140 years. It’s iconic and, f***ing hell, it was some adrenaline rush on matchdays. I miss that. When the doors close for the final time, it will be a sad day for a lot of people.”
