The bitter pub name game

Drinkers looking out on to Dulwich's busy Lordship Lane from the large, neighbourhood pub, which dates back almost 200 years, will see several shops named after The Plough. The narrow road that runs behind the building is Plough Lane. Even buses that stop outside refer to The Plough on their timetables. Yet, for five years now, the pub that these things take their name from has been called The Goose and Granite. This is the pub singled out by Mr Smith in his speech to the House of Commons. He said: "It appears to me that there is a growing fashion for rebranding pubs with names like The Goose and Granite, which would appear to have little relevance to the history of any area."

Certainly drinkers in the pub - and on a weekday lunchtime there are only a handful - seem bemused by the need to change the name. Retired van driver Bob Haynes, 70, said: "When they announced they were planning to change the name, everyone was up in arms. We organised a petition and thousands of people signed it. But they went ahead and changed it anyway. I still come here because it's my local but if I could change the name back I would. Everyone I know still calls it The Plough."

The owner, Bass, pointed out that the official name was now The Goose and Granite at The Plough, and defended the decision to change it.

A spokesman said: "Branding is important in every field, it just came to pubs late. When you are taking over a pub, you need to send out the message that it is in new hands and a change of name is one of the ways of doing that."

Bass has made improvements, smartening the place up and introducing innovations that many will welcome - no-smoking areas, for example. Yet the drinkers in Mr Haynes's party mutter darkly that it was "better before - and more people came in".

Another major player, Weatherspoons, protested innocence at the charge of tampering with history.

A spokesman said: "We go out of our way to preserve any historical links. We opened a bar in Marble Arch recently in a disused bank and looked into the area's past to find a name. We decided to call it The Tyburn after the gallows nearby."

Some figures say the number of pub names being changed in London alone is now running at almost 150 a year. For Camra, the real ale campaign group, Mr Smith has identified an issue that is symbolic of a wider malaise affecting more and more of the country's 61,000 pubs as they become Rat and Parrots, Slug and Lettuces or All Bar Ones.

"Pub names have always changed, we accept that, but it doesn't usually end with the name," said a Camra spokesman.

"They refit the inside - buying Ye Olde books and all those fake fittings - trying to target young people with whatever the latest fashion is. It was Irish pubs a few years ago, now it's Australian. It's the McDonaldsisation of our pubs."

Of course, a pub doesn't need to have a historic name to be popular - The Churchill Arms in Kensington, for example, was last year's Evening Standard Pub of the Year with a name scarcely older than many West End wine bars - but it helps. It would be a reckless publican that would rebrand perennial favourites like The George Inn in the Borough or The East End's Prospect of Whitby.