The famous rowers’ pub, the Penny Ferry in Chesterton, is to close after more than 150 years of service. The well-known landmark was originally named the Pike and Eel and has been a fixture on the Cam since the 1850’s. The pub is to be demolished and development plans have been accepted to build several four bedroom houses on the site.

The closure follows several troublesome years for the Greene King pub, with a rumoured eight years of losses behind it. The Penny Ferry has shared its premises with an Indian takeaway restaurant since 2007 but this has not been enough to save the once-thriving pub.

Michael Bond, head of the Old Chesterton Residents Association, blames local behaviour for the closure, claiming “it’s not ideal when you have clientele who like to smash things, which unfortunately is a problem in this area”. He went on to say that “unless you have a very strong landlord who is willing to exercise his right to throw people out, it’s easy for a pub’s reputation to go downhill and it’s not easy to recover from that”.

The Penny Ferry is not the only pub to fall victim in Chesterton, with both the Dog and Pheasant and the Yorkshire Grey also closing. This leaves only 2 out of the original 5 public houses still open in the East Chesterton area. Overall, 9 pubs out of 243 in Cambridge have recently been forced to close. Many residents blame economic factors and the availability of cheap supermarket booze for the downturn in the British Pub Culture.

The Penny Ferry has a corner named after it on the Cam and features in the famous Bumps race as a landmark before the men’s finish. The pub is also recommended by several guide websites as the perfect place to watch the races. One St Catharine’s boatie said of the closure, “it’s a shame that such an icon of Cambridge rowing has fallen victim to the economic downturn”.

The houses which are to replace the pub are designed to mimic boathouses in appearance, to blend with surrounding architecture. They will also be built on raised platforms in order to preserve the local floodplain and cause minimum destruction to the course of the Cam. The news has not gone down well with some members of the rowing community, causing one Wolfson rower to comment: “Just what we need, more boathouses”.