“You might be Celtic fans trying to find out secrets,” says Kate, the thin, sandy-haired barmaid manning the counter at Bristol Bar on Duke Street. She’s friendly enough but seems tired, perhaps because she’s had to spend 10 minutes of her shift explaining the unwritten rules of this particular pub, namely: don’t speak to journalists.
Journalists are not outright barred, Kate continues, but their visits are not welcome. The punters here — mostly Rangers F.C fans — are “private individuals with private opinions” which, she worries, will be reflected onto Bristol Bar itself. She may have a point. One of her customers, a small, middle-aged woman with greying blonde hair scraped back into a severe high ponytail, takes the moment to loudly proclaim the reason the Original Louden Tavern down the road is shutting is because “they’re turning it into a mosque”. Kate grimaces and continues pulling pints.
The Original Louden Tavern is not shutting to become a mosque, The Bell can confirm, but it is closing its doors on 29 August, after one last weekend of “entertainment”. The decision was announced on the pub’s Facebook page last week. “It’s not being used,” the plaintive post read, “please take on board and don’t let this happen to any other rangers pub”.
Its demise is quite the blow to Rangers history. Of the 38 pubs across Glasgow associated closely with the club and its fans, the Original Louden was one of the first.
Records of a licenced premise at the address date as far back as 1889 — Rangers was founded in 1872, and its name arrived in 1946, from a family in Wellpark who owned it. The Louden Tavern as it exists now though, as a fully-themed Rangers bar, came into being in the early 1990s, via the Marshall family.
Son Robert Marshall also set up the city’s latest Loudens, on Copland Road and Harvie Street, but Duke Street’s is the oldest and — as the name proclaims — the original. Rumours abound about why it’s suddenly shutting its doors: a new owner; the “Catholic council”.
So what’s actually going on? We discovered a sad (depending on who you ask) tale of changing clientele, hard times for boozers and a football pub that doesn’t actually show football any more.
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