1,200 Year Old Pub Ye Olde Fighting Cocks Goes Out of Business Due to Covid Restrictions

Richard Gardner. Shutterstock Images.

WaPo - The Ye Olde Fighting Cocks pub in St. Albans, England, has seen it all: Since its first brick was laid, possibly as early as 793, near the ruins of an ancient Roman city well before the United Kingdom was formed, the drinking house has survived civil and world wars, famine and the spread of the bubonic plague.

But hardships brought on by the coronavirus pandemic mean the pub — which once held the Guinness World Records title as England’s oldest, though others contested it — is shutting its doors.

Christo Tofalli, who took over the lease of the heavily beamed pub in 2012, told The Washington Post that the pandemic and the government’s public health restrictions squeezed his business until he couldn’t meet its financial obligations.

With a lot of places easing restrictions and even my own state of Maskachusetts on its last day of mandating face coverings for school kids, I pray to God, with tears in my eyes, that this is the last post I write on this topic. 

But when this pandemic is finally behind us - and believe me, I know people who are convinced it will never be and that the human race is condemned to live like this in perpetuity, with masks and booster shots and social distancing until the sun goes nova - we need to remember how we all dealt with it. Who overreacted and who underreacted. Who chose to live in a constant state of panic and who chose to just live their lives, with a reasonable amount of precautions. And above all else, who set the rules they demanded everybody else obey and then violated them for ridiculous reasons. (Here's just one example, but there are hundreds more where it came from.) 

For me personally, I'm never going to forget the sheer, hate-filled hysteria that was directed at anyone who expressed genuine sadness any time business had to shut down. As proud as I am to be part of a company that was responsible for saving small businesses through The Barstool Fund, I've been equal parts appalled at the Covid alarmists who've taken any show of empathy toward people losing their livelihoods because of the shutdowns. Express that you're sorry to see a restaurant, pub or store close, show regret over comedy shows, concerts, parties or fundraisers canceled, and within a minute you'd have have keyboard warriors who never leave their apartments and live off food deliveries come at you from all directions like shut-in ninjas, declaring that you're willing to sacrifice their grammy and grampy's lives just to get drunk with your fellow heartless, irresponsible idiots. I got my first such virtual artillery barrage for a charity benefit comedy show I did on March 14, 2020, when we were still in the "Wash your hands for 20 seconds" stage of the pandemic. And I expect to get more (assuming anyone still has ammo left) for what I'm about to say. 

I'm choosing my words very carefully when I say this: Ye Olde Fighting Cocks having to shut its doors is a tragedy. Straight up, in no uncertain terms, a tragedy. If you have any sense of history whatsoever, if you're anything more than a self-possessed narcissist searching the web for something to signal your virtue over while you wait for your chicken parm to arrive, you have to agree. To put it in perspective, 1,229 years old means the Fighting Cocks was established in Anglo-Saxon England in 793 AD. Around the time the Vikings first started raiding monasteries along the northern coastline. That's 273 years before the Norman Conquest of 1066. Meaning that when William the Conqueror invaded England and established Norman rule, the Cocks was older than the United States is now. By a lot. That represents untold hundreds of thousands or even millions of patrons over the millennia having good times that have suddenly come to an end. 

So Ye Olde Fighting Cocks survived wars, two World Wars, famines, plagues, political upheavals, monarchs being assassinated, political and religious purges, weather disasters like the Great Frost of 1709 and the Great Freeze of 1894, and Beatlemania. But it couldn't survive the way the UK handled a virus that has an infinitesimal death rate among the young and healthy. If that doesn't prove to you that our political leaders have botched this thing, I don't know what possibly could. I suppose you're just entrenched in your belief this was all necessary and beyond being convinced otherwise.

The potentially good news is that the building is going on the market. And hopefully will be sold to someone with a respect for tradition who will keep it open as is, instead of, say, putting in a cell phone store with a meth addict spinning a cardboard arrow out front. If that should happen and the Fighting Cocks is reopened, I'll make it my life's goal to go to England for the first time, find the place and hoist a pint to all those who fought the good fight throughout the last two years. 

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P.S. My advice is that you don't use "fighting cocks" as a search term. Some things you can't unsee.