The pub that survived disaster, but not Rachel Reeves

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Bob Griffiths unlocks the door of The Phoenix at noon on Saturday, the last day a pub will ever open on this corner.

His hands move with practised efficiency, turning the key, flipping the sign, lighting the fire in the white building's chimney.

He cleaned the draught lines this morning for the final time, a ritual performed thousands of times over 15 years, today rendered ceremonial.

The Telegraph spent the night before with locals dancing until midnight, their dogs weaving between ankles, the music loud enough to shake memories loose from the walls.

The Phoenix, in Canterbury, Kent, has been one of those places that holds more than just memories.

A pub on the corner of Cossington Road and Old Dover Road where strangers became friends, where first dates turned into proposals, where cricket victories were celebrated, and defeats were drowned. Where people have gathered for 152 years to be less alone.

But it has also been the place where hearts broke quietly over pints that grew warm.

Now, in the pale January light, farewell letters sit stacked on the bar. Bob picks one up, then another, reading words that might explain what he cannot quite grasp himself.

The Phoenix rose from ashes once before. In 1968, fire gutted the Bridge House Tavern that had stood here since 1874.

Someone decided its new name should honour resurrection. But 58 years later, rising costs and taxes, and Chancellor Rachel Reeves's failure to support the sector have proved too much.

"Everything is changed, we are losing our democracy very quickly," Bob, 82, says, his voice carrying the weight of something larger than beer and closing time.

"I don't quite understand what is going on to be honest. This is the only place in the world where you can say what you like, in this very place, in pubs. They're all shutting down."

He remembers childhood in Chatham, where his father served in the Royal Navy.

"When I was a kid, there were 24 pubs in Brook Street in Chatham; 24 pubs. Three next door to one another."

'It's such a happy place'

Sharon Higenbottam, 67, sits near the window with the weight of symmetry pressing on her. She first walked through these doors as a 15-year-old in the 1970s, stopping for a Diet Coke with a friend on their way to a Simon Langton Girls' School disco.

No alcohol, just two teenagers seeking refuge before a night of awkward dancing.

"It's such a happy place," she says, her voice catching on the present tense. "I feel safe walking here if I'm on my own."

"People feel lost," she says simply. "Bob and Nilla, they've been here for I don't know how long, but they're always very welcoming."

The doors lock. And Sharon will have to find somewhere else, somewhere farther away, somewhere that doesn't feel as safe for a 67-year-old woman walking alone on a Friday night.

"Canterbury is losing so many pubs," she says. "It's a sad day for Canterbury, actually."

Bill Wilkie, 80, can recall with precision the day he had his first drink at The Phoenix: Jan 1 1970. He'd just returned from Germany and started work down the road.

At lunchtime, he and his new colleagues walked up to the pub. He's been coming ever since, on and off. Mainly on.

"Very sad," Mr Wilkie says. "The prospect of walking past it when it's going to be dark and dead, it's horrible."

'This is like our social centre'

Mr Wilkie spent his career as a surveyor and estate agent in Canterbury. He's watched the pattern repeat across Kent's villages: pub closes, social life dies.

"I've seen particularly in the villages where the pub closes down, they've got no social life at all really, got no sense for their activities."

"It's not the smartest of pubs as you might see," Mr Wilkie acknowledges, "but there's a lot of us who live here locally so this is like our social centre, focus, and that's under threat."

His most vivid memory of The Phoenix is standing outside, watching the Tour de France ride past when it came to England several years ago. The rest, he says, "just blurs into a series of nights of drinking".

Spencer Griffiths, Bob's son, stands near the bar with the arithmetic of failure written in his posture.

"It is both because of affordability and their physical health that they are closing it down," Spencer says.

He adds: "The affordability is huge. For instance, if they wanted to retire and get somebody else the lease, they could get someone else to run it if it was profitable, but it is not. It is absolutely correct that there are no profit margins."

He ticks off the pressures like a coroner listing causes of death: business rates, the energy crisis that sent bills spiralling before this government and under it. The physics of bodies wearing out. The economics of an industry collapsing.

Bob, however, resists the easy political blame. Where others point fingers at Westminster, he points at something else.

"People have stopped drinking," he says. "And I don't quite understand why people stop drinking, but there you go."

His regulars disagree. Vehemently.

A man who has drunk at The Phoenix for 40 years has a different account.

"The main reason is to blame Labour because they could not reduce the prices," he says. "Previously, I would be able to drink all night for £20, now it won't buy one round for three friends.

"The Labour Party and their policies are to be blamed to some extent because they have not been able to control inflation and that has a huge impact on the local economy because people cannot afford it."

Some blame the Government. Some blame culture. Some blame both. All agree that something essential is dying.

David Foley, who is in his 70s, remembers his first pint here in 1972. He speaks with the practised irony of someone who has wrestled the world's problems over beer and found them unsolvable.

"It is fair to say hospitality in east Kent is under severe pressure for a variety of reasons, which include rates and taxation," he says. "The Phoenix has risen from the ashes once before.

"In the last two weeks here, we have resolved the problem of global warming, we have resolved the problem of Gaza."

He pauses for effect.

"We are about to turn our attention to something more serious, such as the Kent cricket team, which is at the bottom of division two, but before the season starts in April, we won't have the opportunity to do so. Kent cricket would also suffer."

Pubs are under financial strain because of the Labour Government's increases in business rates, National Insurance employer contributions and the minimum wage, which have coincided with the end of pandemic-era VAT relief.

Andrew Heywood lives 40yds up the road. He moved to the area in 2003 and has been coming to The Phoenix ever since.

When Mr Heywood worked in London and commuted by bicycle, he'd arrive back at Canterbury station at nine or 10 at night, exhausted and starving.

He'd stop at The Phoenix, and Bob would see him walk through the door and have a plate of sandwiches waiting on the bar. "That's the way he treated you," Mr Heywood says.

A whole social network

"I feel quite emotional about it, actually," the 67-year-old chartered surveyor admits. "I don't know, where will I go? Where's the community hub around here? There isn't one any more."

The Phoenix has become the foundation of his social life. The same group gathers for Friday music nights, then the friendships spill beyond the pub's walls - dinner parties, gatherings, a whole social network built on the foundation of a neighbourhood bar.

"I've met so many friends here. This whole group of us on a Friday night come down, and as a result, we go around to each other's houses and have parties and things like that, because we met in the pub."

The Phoenix hosted Friday music nights where people danced, Wednesday quiz nights where they competed, and countless ordinary Tuesdays where they simply existed in the same space.

Bob talks about democracy and free speech, about the pub as the last place you can say what you like.

The irony isn't lost - in a country that prides itself on free expression, the spaces where that expression happens are vanishing faster than anyone can count them.

The fire in the chimney burns, warming the white building one last time. Bob has neuropathy in his feet and diabetes becoming problematic.

He and his wife Nilla have earned rest. The lease is up. The numbers don't work. The people have stopped coming in numbers that pay the bills.

If the lease wasn't up, would he like to continue running it? "No, not really," Bob admits. His body has made the decision, economics only confirmed it.

Around the pub, objects wait for removal. A cricket picture that cost £240 will go home with Bob, though he doesn't follow cricket. A decade and a half of accumulated life needs packing, transporting, finding new places. Memory has weight and takes up space.

The Phoenix rose from fire in 1968. But on Sunday, the locks will change and The Phoenix that rose from ashes will stay buried.