When Enterprise Inns closed the Ivy House in April 2012 – with plans to sell it to a property developer – things looked bleak for the south London pub. Its well-established status as a community and live music venue, which has hosted artists like Joe Strummer, Elvis Costello, and Ian Dury, was under threat. What followed is a story of civic triumph.
Nestled in the residential backstreets of Peckham Rye, The Ivy House has the proud title of being London’s first cooperatively-owned pub. When its existence was threatened, members of the local community stepped forward, campaigning successfully for a Grade II listing and raising £1 million to buy the freehold and refurbish the building.
‘Me and my other half both bought shares, we spent quite a bit of money because we love the pub and we wanted to keep it open’
So what exactly does it mean to be a community pub? On a lively Friday evening, I grabbed a pint of Brick Brewery’s Peckham Pale and set up camp in a cosy corner of London’s first coop pub to find out. General manager Martha Dickson was the first to pull up a stool for a chat.
‘Me and the co-general manager run the pub day-to-day, and above us, there’s a management committee, who are a handful of the shareholders that volunteer their time to work as the business managers,’ she said. ‘They’ll set the budgets and make the overall decisions. It’s quite funny having customers who are invested because they always want to bounce ideas off you. You want to make sure everyone feels heard because they are invested in it in a very real sense, but the ultimate decisions come down to the management committee and us as general managers.’
The management committee consists of eight local residents who oversee pub operations and ensure the boozer’s continued existence. According to committee vice-chair Geoff Cudd, ‘Everyone can have an input. The managers run the pub, while we look after the finances and the building. Since I’ve retired, at times I’ve put more hours in here as a volunteer than I did when I was at work.’ This work ethic is driven largely by a commitment to fair treatment of staff, customers, and shareholders alike.
‘The basic ethos of the pub is we’re a non-profit making organisation,’ said Geoff. ‘But we have to make a profit in order to keep ahead. Any building work that needs to be done goes through me… there’s always something. You’ve got to take into account staff wages, which have to go up because we pay a proper London Living Wage.’ These principles set the tone for a pub that’s about way more than just the beer; The Ivy House is a local institution that uses music, comedy, dance and yoga events to bring local people together.
‘It’s definitely an events-led pub,’ Martha tells me. ‘We try to do a big mixture of things… music, cabaret, film screenings, community classes. In particular, our events manager Sam Gowans has really pushed the local indie music scene.’ True to form, that night Sam is occupied with an event organised by Sister Midnight, a non-profit aiming to build their own community-owned music venue. Even so, he’s generous with his time and keen to emphasise the pub’s role in the music scene.
‘The stage here is just a fever dream,’ he says, pointing out the venue’s plush, velvet-laden centrepiece. ‘So many in the area are just black painted box halls, which I think is partly why so many people keep coming back here. It’s not just limited to music – anything you can do on a stage, we’re more than willing to try.’ He tells me when he started working at the pub, it was very much a local. Now, the new occupiers are keen to take advantage of its decadent 1930s ballroom interior.
I’m introduced to Hugo Simms, a local historian and former committee member who helped earn the Ivy House its Grade II listing, thereby laying the foundations for the community ownership model that endures today. ‘It was pushed through [by English Heritage] the day before the pub was due to be bought by the property developer. The developer pulled out, and the pub was still closed, but it closed with a sense of hope that it could be saved.’
That’s when the campaign to save the Ivy House began. Aided by Hugo and a handful of others, pub regular Tessa Blunden took charge of the newly-formed committee. It was around the time that the government brought in a new law, The Assets of Community Value Act 2012, which gave local residents influence over what might happen to important local institutions and buildings. The Ivy House became the first building to be listed as a community asset and was then bought under a ‘community right to bid’ provision of the Localism Act, with the £1 million freehold price tag being covered by grants and loans.
The pub means a lot to those who use it. ‘Me and my other half both bought shares, we spent quite a bit of money because we love the pub and we wanted to keep it open,’ said Geoff. ‘Because I’d drunk in here for so many years, I didn’t want to lose it.’ At first, weddings supplied most of the pub’s events income but the pandemic changed that. ‘What Covid did,’ said Hugo, ‘was it gave the pub the chance to thrive without being an events venue, and these guys were able to carry it on, turning it into a destination pub.’
The cosy charm of its wood panelling, wall art, hand-pumped real ales, and homely bookshelves has made The Ivy House a rare success story; the number of people rammed in on the particular Friday night I visited was a testament to that. As I was leaving, I was told that during the second world war, homeless families sheltered in the pub when the surrounding houses were bombed. Peckham’s residents have finally been able to return the favour.
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