Steve Cornish remembers the start of his multi-decade love affair with the China Hall. When he was younger, Bermondsey was its own little breakaway state inside of the capital. It even had its own football league. And every Sunday after the match he would sprint away, often without showering, stopping only to chuck his boots into a Tesco bag, to ensure he got a seat in the China Hall, a Victorian corner pub perched on the edge of Southwark Park.
For Cornish, the unique draw of the China Hall for 35 years came down to one man: Micky Norris, its talismanic landlord. It’s hard to get across the love held for the man without slipping into hagiography. Former staff describe him in almost saintly terms; one even called Norris and his family “the greatest family I’ve ever met” and the pub their “second home”. Norris, I’m told, would spend all day perched around the pub, not drinking, just talking to customers, and every Christmas he’d invite any of them who were going to be alone to spend it with his family in their flat above the wood-panelled, 300-year-old boozer.
I’m reminiscing with Cornish, who’s so entrenched in the area that he’s known as “Mr Rotherhithe”, because of what happened next. As he recalls the saga, he’s flanked by another long-time pub regular, Michael Robertson, who has shoulder length white hair and a white beard nearly as long as the pastel linen jacket he’s wearing.
In 2017, the China Hall got a new owner: a mysterious property company based in the tax haven Isle of Man called Hamna Wakaf. The new owners made clear to Norris that they would only renew the pub’s lease if the family paid twice their rent. Failing that, they’d redevelop the site. Norris spent every penny he could on lawyers, begging Hamna Wakaf to save the pub and community he’d spent his life building. It was little use. They were to be evicted from their flat above the pub on Christmas Eve 2018. They would have been left homeless, were it not for a last minute intervention by a local MP that got them first a delay to their eviction and then a new home in Camberwell.
With Norris’ ousting, they had ripped the pub’s heart out. Next, they came for the body. Locals like Cornish and Robertson, who led the China Hall Local Community Group, watched as Hamna Wakaf slowly gutted the pub over the ensuing years. Council inspectors arrived in January 2022 to find the bar removed, the beer lines cut, fixtures and fittings stripped out and the space subdivided into two ground floor apartments. They ordered the developer to stop — they hadn’t obtained planning permission. Hamna Wakaf resisted, pushing for retrospective permission and arguing it was now no longer viable as a pub. But last summer, after years of legal wrangling, appeals and even a public inquiry, the pub campaigners and the council won: the China Hall was ordered to remain as a pub.
But it was too late for Norris.
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