Cllr James Potts has made it his mission to get the beer flowing again at the Mother Red Cap

A PLAN is afoot to save an Irish pub in Archway that has been closed since its landlord retired last year on the day after St Patrick’s Day.

Despite 16 months of closed doors, drawn curtains and accumulating graffiti, regulars at the Mother Red Cap on Holloway Road held out hope that a new publican would take the boozer on.

But when the vacant building was boarded up a few weeks ago, Archway community WhatsApp groups were abuzz with anxiety that the pub, whose history dates back to 1871, could be lost for good.

Local councillor James Potts has made it his mission to get the beer flowing again. He told the Tribune: “I walk past it every day on the way to the tube. I have been in there a fair few times in the decade I have lived in the area. It’s got a really nice interior – lovely tiles on the walls.

Instagram pics of how it used to look inside with its pool table and traditional feel

“We’re trying to get in touch with the brewery who run the pub to understand what the situation is. That’s where we are at the minute, but I’m keen to get it back open. I’m of Irish descent and we have a strong Irish community in Archway. Local pubs are part of our culture and our identity, and important community hubs as well. Hopefully it’s good news and the pub will reopen in the future.”

Pubs are something of a passion project for Cllr Potts, who wrote a book with his friend Sam Cullen during lockdown about the stories behind pub names – a mere 650 of them.

According to Cllr Potts, “Mother Red Cap” reflects the moniker given to female brewers – or “ale wives” – in the middle ages, who purportedly wore red caps as they worked in what was then a relatively lucrative career for women.

The book also dug into the namesakes of other local pubs including The Flóirín, also on Holloway Road, which is named after an old coin, and Junction Road’s Oak and Pastor, named for its wooden furniture, including an intact confession booth, that was salvaged from an old church.

In Camden Town, punk pub The World’s End used to be similarly called the Old Mother Red Cap, although local bloggers detail a darker history to the name than its Upper Holloway counterpart.

Allegedly, Old Mother Red Cap was a real woman in the 1600s – a fortune-teller and herbalist who lived in a cottage where the pub now stands and was shunned for her witchy late-night foraging antics and the mysterious deaths of several lovers.