Mike McClean, organiser of the Save the Green Dragon campaign, is asking supporters to reply to a survey being run by the pub's new owners, Green Lanes Investments. Mike's message is reproduced below.
Friends,
The developers who currently own the Green Dragon pub have, via their PR Company, started to distribute promotional material around the local area which is intended to try and gain some support for their plan to end 300 years of Winchmore Hill history for their own profit. We can only assume that they are doing this because they intend to challenge Enfield Council if they award us Asset of Community Value status, or are intending to submit a planning application soon and want their plans to appear popular.
The leaflets invite the recipients to return a short (cunningly worded) questionnaire or contact the developers at in order to give them some feedback on their intentions. We are writing this email in order to ask you to do exactly that!
It doesn't have to be a long message and you don't need to be an expert on any aspect of this case. It is simply an opportunity to tell the developers (and probably Enfield Council) how you feel. If you do email them, please BCC so that we are aware of your responses and can challenge any claim that the people of Winchmore Hill are in favour of this change.
The developers are trying to ignore the fact that the Green Dragon has been a pub at the centre of our community for nearly three centuries, and are hoping that a fancy leaflet and the prospect of a Waitrose on the site will be enough to persuade us. Waitrose is a nice shop but do we need it? There is a Waitrose 1.5 miles away in Palmers Green and two more not much more than 2 miles away in Enfield.
Another aspect upon which they are focussing is a need for housing, but in recent years Winchmore Hill has seen plenty of housing created, there is the whole Highlands Village development, the flats on either side of Firs Lane on the hump back bridge, the new flats on that same road further towards Green Lanes, the retirement flats where Firs Banqueting used to be, the flats near the petrol station, the site of the old garden centre on the Green and the development on the river on Green Lanes heading towards Palmers Green. How much more does this little area need to give?
The fact of the matter is that none of this is based on a lack of supermarkets or housing, none of this is based on what the people of Winchmore Hill want or need, and none of this is based on what is best for local businesses or anyone else who lives or works in the area. The sole reason for this proposed development is that GLI, like so many other developers who are targeting pubs all over the country, have identified an opportunity to make themselves a huge profit.
Communities are made up of so much more than shops and houses. We need places to come together, to meet friends and make new friends, to celebrate, to laugh, to get to know one another. The people of Winchmore Hill started doing this in the Green Dragon 100 years before the battle of Waterloo!
It is true to say that the Green Dragon had lost some popularity in recent years owing to a lack of investment by a failing parent company, but whilst organising this campaign we have been approached by some big companies who have expressed an interest in continuing to run it as a pub and who would invest huge amounts of money to make it popular again if they were given the opportunity.
The developers themselves seem to know that the closing of the Green Dragon is wrong. They take every opportunity to state that it was closed by the previous owners and not them (they say it twice in this leaflet). Presumably they have some technicality on which to make this claim, but we all know that the pub was serving beer until the end of January and was boarded up by the developer days later.
The Green Dragon is too important to be lost in this way, it should at least have been widely and openly advertised and allowed some time to find a new owner who could run it properly. Look at what time and advertising has achieved at the new Winchmores pub (previously the Chase Side Tavern)
Please take a couple of minutes to contact the developers and make your feelings known at the address above or return their leaflet if you have received one. If this matters to you then please say so. Only our combined efforts can save the Green Dragon and preserve our history, our culture and our community for generations to come. If we don’t all do our bit it will be lost forever
Take Courage
Mike McClean
on behalf of the Save the Green Dragon campaign
