Nature Always Finds A Way

The rear service yard at the Terminus Hotel is overgrown. A small paved courtyard between the back of the building and the boundary wall has been colonised by self-seeded weeds, with ivy climbing the walls on three sides and grass pushing up through the joints in the brick paving. A timber bench sits along one wall, the slats split and the painted finish flaking. A galvanised tap on the back wall is still in place, the brass spindle green with verdigris. The light reaches the yard between the upper edge of the rear wall and the corner of the roof. From the open back door, the yard reads as a green room rather than a service area.

The rear yard was the working space of the pub: where kegs were rolled in from the delivery van, where bottles were stacked for collection, where the kitchen exhaust opened onto fresh air. The visible building is the 1917 Tooth and Co. demolition and rebuild. The pub closed in 1983 and the yard stopped being used. Across the 33 years of vacancy the ivy that grew across the front of the building extended around to the rear, and the paving turned to garden. The 2018 restoration cleared the working areas for service but kept some of the green cover as part of the building's reopened character.