Charley boy

I was interested to see in Saturday's Telegraph that HRH The Prince of Wales (or as wikipedia has it, 'The Prince Charles'), has seen fit to build a large new public house in his village of Poundbury.

Bit of a puzzle to me how this joint venture (with the local brewer, Hall & Woodhouse) is going to work, as around here (in Epsom) nearly all the large pubs, the gin palaces, a lot of them built in the first half of the last century, are closing down. Even in heavily populated outer London, there is not the business to carry places of this sort any more - so how on earth are they going to manage in outer Dorchester? A place which seemed rather dead when we visited it a year or so back. Plenty of buildings, but no people to be seen.

The only people who seems to be able to pull off large pubs these days are Wetherspoons, but I don't suppose the HRH has their sort of clientèle in mind.

But perhaps there are enough people who want to sample the royal boozer to keep it going for a while. Maybe Shearings will send in their coaches. We might even join in the next time we are down that way.

PS: google turns up pictures of the pub under construction, pictures which suggest that, despite the finished appearance, the place has a steel frame and what you see is cladding. Probably just the same in that regard as the Ritz Hotel on which it is said to be loosely modeled.

Reference 1: http://duchessofcornwall.co.uk/.

Reference 2: http://www.hall-woodhouse.co.uk/.