‘It’s a monkey’s puzzle’: is it possible to rebuild the Crooked House pub?

The venue’s owners have been told to put it back to its wonky glory after it was gutted by a fire and bulldozed

Rebuilding a 260-year-old building that was burned to a shell and then bulldozed to a pile of rubble is no mean feat in any scenario. But rebuilding the Crooked House pub, a lopsided structure that had sunk 4ft into the ground, is even trickier.

“It’s a bit of a monkey’s puzzle, with no right angles,” said Stephen Levrant, who runs a heritage architecture firm. “Because everything is out of kilter and you’ve got gravity acting in a completely different way, it will have to be approached as if it was quite a sophisticated modern structure.”