Britain’s wonkiest pub still standing sold

The Tilted Barrel in the West Midlands town of Tipton has been sold just months after The Crooked House, the previous claimant of the title of Britain’s wonkiest pub, was demolished.

The Grade II-listed The Tilted Barrel was built in the mid-19th century and is situated just five miles from The Crooked House. While the latter long held the title of ‘wonkiest pub’, its sale and the subsequent fire this August (suspected by some to be arson, with a number of arrests made since), The Tilted Barrel is now widely considered to be the most skew whiff pub in Britain, with its unconventional angle a result of a land subsidence caused by mining.

Landlady Haych Mann took over the premises in February of this year, refurbishing it before the site went to auction. The Mirror reports that one of the changes Mann made was to move the pool table to another room as the angle of the floor of the previous location made it impossible to play.

After the destruction of the Crooked House, Mann said: “It’s a bitter sweet moment to know we might be Britain’s wonkiest pub now. Most of our regulars drank in the Crooked House too.”

The Tilted Barrel was then auctioned off through Cottons Chartered Surveyors, though it was unclear whether or not Mann would remain in post as landlay. According to BBC News it failed to sell, but was sold afterwards for somewhere between its guide price of £170,000 to £178,000 in late October when a buyer, whose identity is yet to be revealed, came forward.

The circumstances surrounding the loss of the Crooked House sparked uproar and raised public awareness of the perilous position many of Britain’s pubs are in – CAMRA went so far as to call it a “national tragedy”.