Cellar

The cellar at the Terminus Hotel sits below the public bar, accessed through a hatch in the floor with a vertical ladder. The room is brick-walled, the brick darkened by decades of damp. A row of vintage beer kegs sits against the back wall, their copper bands tarnished, their wood staves grey. A single overhead bulb is fitted but no longer working. Daylight reaches the cellar through an iron grate at street level on Harris Street. The temperature is cool. The air smells like old timber and faintly of stale beer.

Pubs of this era kept their beer in the cellar because cellars were the only naturally cool storage. The Terminus had a cellar with direct keg-line connection to the bar above, allowing fresh beer to be drawn straight up to the taps. The visible building is the 1917 Tooth and Co. demolition and rebuild, with the cellar arrangement set up at that time. The kegs in this photograph are the original kegs left when the pub closed in 1983. The lines were drained, but the kegs were not removed. The 2018 restoration brought in new equipment and modern refrigerated storage. The original kegs were kept where they were as part of the heritage of the building. They have been here longer than most of the patrons who now drink upstairs.