‘Geezers’ get £2k to go on pub crawl

A pensioners’ club has been awarded £2,000 to go on a pub crawl around London’s East End to research pub closures as part of an upcoming exhibition.

The Geezers on a trip to Parliament earlier this year

Ray Gipson, a retired lorry driver from Tower Hamlets, founded Bow’s Geezers’ Club for pensioners in 2007 to bring pensioners in the area together, as reported by London24. 

In what as been described as a Big Society “community first”, the group has been given £2,000 of taxpayers’ cash to research pub closures as part of a project in partnership with the Tower Hamlets Archive at Mile End and gather material for an exhibition on the area’s pubs in the New Year.

As well as collecting photographs of old pubs in Bow, Gipson and his band of Geezers plan to contact former landlords and regulars to record their memories of former watering holes which have since vanished.

When asked why so many pubs have closed Gipson told the paper: “I blame breweries and investment companies. They sold off pub sites and didn’t care about the social value—at least 40 have gone in Bow alone since the 1970s.”

The project will see the group embark on a pub crawl of London’s East End, of which there has been no shortage of volunteers.

Earlier this year Camra said London pubs were closing at a “shocking” rate with 90 said to be closing their doors every year, while the closure rate for UK pubs has climbed to 31 per week, rising from 28 per week in December 2013.