Protect Our Pubs! The Crooked House, Grassroots Campaigning, and Heritage Pub Protection

Grassroots campaigns are taking up space in the online sphere, now more than ever. Their digital presence has been largely beneficial for their campaigning goals. However, conducting a campaign predominantly in an online space is not without challenges for those involved. This chapter explores how the suspected arson and unlawful demolition of a near 300-year-old pub in the Black Country, England, prompted a grassroots campaign of unexpected scope, scale, and longevity primarily in the online sphere. This chapter explores how the Crooked House campaign came to be, as well as its innovative actions and successes to date, through the lens of the digital. Thereafter, it highlights firstly, the pitfalls and perils of a campaign this sizeable; secondly, the success of merging online and offline strategies; and thirdly, the potential for this campaign to change our attitudes towards heritage pubs forever. A site of resistance in a pastiche of cruelly lost heritage pubs, the ‘Save the Crooked House!: Let’s Get it Re-Built’ campaign demonstrates the power of people, and the digital, in grassroots campaigning.