Axe & Cleaver, Southwick

Demolished.

This large village pub, which closed for the last time in 2012, was demolished in August 2013 to make way for car sales business. The pub had had a chequered history. In the early nineties it became a sort of out-of-town, youth-orientated, night-club-style pub. In the late nineties it was acquired by the local Ushers brewery. The new owners re-named the pub the Wych and tried to make it a venue equally attractive to locals and a passing food trade. In 1999, however, the brewery itself closed and, from then onwards, the pub seems to have struggled. Finally it closed and was subsequently converted into an Indian restaurant. As such the venue fared little better and, by around early 2011, the building was again closed and boarded up. In around the spring of 2011 the venue suddenly opened again as a pub under its original name. It seemed that the Axe & Cleaver might have had a new lease of life. The freehold of the pub, however, went on the market in 2012 and was sold. The pub then closed again. Planning permission for its demolition was approved with almost no local opposition. This leaves Southwick with one pub: the Wadworth’s owned Farmhouse.