Last orders for never-opened Woolwich pub as plan for shops submitted

Hopes that Woolwich town centre would get a new pub look set to be dead without a pint being served after plans to turn the site into two shop units were submitted.

The pub group Antic had long planned to open The Volunteer at the west end of Powis Street, next to the former Co-op department store, and won planning permission for the bar and four flats in 2020.

But Antic’s operations were severely curtailed last year when many of its pubs went into administration. 

There had been hopes that the plan to open The Volunteer would survive when it was listed as among a list of pubs sold to a rival company, Urban Pubs and Bars.

But the planning permission to open a bar and four flats  lapsed in November 2023 with no work carried out. 

Now a Balham-based property company, SPPF, has applied to Greenwich Council to renew that permission, but with retail use rather than a pub.

“The public house element is no longer required and retail occupiers are now interested,” SPPF’s agent, Hilton & Wallace, said in a document submitted to Greenwich Council.

Land Registry records confirm that Urban Pubs & Bars bought the site in August last year for £1.98 million. However, it was sold again at auction in May for just £587,000. 

The site is made up of two units, both of which are said to be in a poor condition after being unused for many years. Both are on the council’s heritage list.

The left-hand building, built in 1901 was originally a drapery for the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society, which was founded in Woolwich and ran local Co-op stores until the Eighties. It later became an optician’s and a chemist’s, and was linked to the department store next door. The building bears the society’s motto, “each for all and all for each”. SPPF has pledged to restore the plaque. 

The right-hand shop dates back to the 1930s and was a funeral furnisher.

Antic had been interested in opening a bar on the site since at least 2013, when it was building up a chain of pubs across London. 

The company won planning permission for a bar three times – in 2014, 2017 and 2020 – but no work was ever carried out.

Planning documents show that as late as November 2023, the company had asked to amend its plans, but was told it needed to submit a full application again. Nine months later, 13 of Antic’s pubs went bust. Most were later bought by Urban Pubs & Bars.

What happened to Antic?

The Antic group – in reality a complex and ever-changing network of companies rather than a single entity – still contains a number of pubs, including Jam Circus in Deptford High Street, but its empire is much reduced from its heyday a decade ago, when it had about 50 pubs across London. 

Antic also owned the Woolwich Equitable pub in Equitable House on General Gordon Square, but that only lasted nine years before closing suddenly in April 2023 because of rent arrears. A Nepalese bar and restaurant, Gulmi, opened there last month.

In Plumstead, Antic had planned to open a bar-restaurant called Plumble in the old Kinara building on the high street. But in December 2023, Greenwich Council only awarded a licence that would allow a maximum of 40 non-diners between 6pm and 10.30pm, and the company never returned to obtain the planning permission needed to open up.

However, Land Registry records show that a company linked with Antic – Jove Ltd – still bought the building from Greenwich Council for £677,000 that same month, when it also had an application for an HMO on the upper floor refused. 

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