What was Marlers Bar, Colney Hatch Lane, Muswell Hill, N10
45 years since the opening of the first ‘Wetherspoons‘
These days Wetherspoons is more often in the news for closing pubs, although it is still opening some as well. The official view is that ‘this town ain’t big enough for two Spoons’
This year marks the 45th anniversary of the opening of the pub that started the Wetherspoons chain, in December 1979.
I used to drink in Marlers bar with friends and with my late father at the end of the 1970s and early 1980s. It was about a mile from my parent’s house which was in the Alexandra Park area of Muswell Hill.
How I heard about Marlers I can’t recall but probably via CAMRA (this was before social media and mobiles).
As a research historian I’m wary of basing things on memory which is often a bit unreliable and prefer to check against printed sources.
The problem here is that as a source the interwebs are just as unreliable as memory.
My memory suggests that Marlers was a joint venture between Andrew Marler and Tim Martin. The officially approved version indicates that Marler was the original owner and then sold to Martin. That did not preclude Martin from having an interest previously of course but it is Marler (who had a beard) I remember behind the bar.
What happened to Marler is mildly obscure though his record of owning the Worlds End in Camden Town and then a pub in Shepherds Bush is well known.
The interwebs indicate that in 2012 he was the owner of two pubs in the St Albans area, one of which, the Cross Keys, had been sold to him by Wetherspoons.
What of the beer in Marlers? My memory suggests that it was from regional brewers like Wadworths, Greene King and Ruddles that were then hardly available in London. CAMRA sources from the time concur. I thought I also recalled Sam Smiths but I might well be wrong.. Copies of the London Drinker from that period more or less confirm this.
A friend who I drank with in Marlers at the time, Mark Baker, recalls ‘it was quite exotic stuff for that part of the world at that time (i.e. wasn’t Ind Coope or Courage!)’
It was certainly the case that Marlers was a shop conversion (more or less unheard of the time). It appears to have been a bookies. Before that the interweb suggests it was a private drinking club for footballers, One source says Spurs, another Arsenal. We can be sure it was not both but the pub is on the Arsenal side of Haringey so it was quite probably them.
The pub has long since ceased to be a Spoons anyway but the story has a, for most, happy ending.
Wetherspoons returned to Muswell Hill, up the hill, just at the top of the hill itself in fact. The Mossy Well is rather a handsome pub a Good Beer Guide regular and were you in the area you could do worse than stop by. Possibly best not to mention the name Marler though.
Wetherspoons started out in Haringey and Tim Martin (who was a lawyer) is on record as saying that a key reason was because there were no decent pubs where he then lived in Wood Green.
Mr Martin is not always right but on this he is absolutely correct. Unexciting as the range of beer in Marlers bar in the late 1970s might seem to us now, 45years ago it would have been very easily the best real ale and hence the best beer range in Haringey. Keg meant Twitbreads and Grotnys. Other alternatives included Courage Best (John Baird Muswell Hill) Ind Coope Burton bitter (Alexandra, St James Lane N10) and Bass and Charrington IPA (Railway Crouch End).
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