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A Black Country pub renowned as ‘Britain’s wonkiest’ has been demolished after an enormous fire destroyed its interior and roof.

The Crooked House in Himley, near Dudley, was sold to a private buyer at the end of last month and was consumed by flames just days later.

Investigators from the police and fire service are now working to establish the cause.

West Midlands mayor Andy Street said there are a ‘lot of questions’ that ‘need answering’ over the blaze, which shocked and outraged locals.

The building, which served as a pub for almost 200 years, was 1.2m higher on one side due to a subsidence issue in the 1800s.

As a result, fittings such as doors and windows appeared to have a distinct lean, and customers enjoyed the phenomenon of coins appearing to roll uphill along the bar.

The Crooked House was originally built in 1765 as a farmhouse, and Historic England received a submission from experts asking for it to be given protected status just a week before the fire, according to The Telegraph.

On July 27, the owners of the pub announced that brewery Marston’s had sold the building to a private buyer and it was ‘unlikely’ to ever open its doors again.

More than 10,000 people signed a subsequent online petition calling for the much-loved building to be saved, which said: ‘Once it is demolished, it will be too late to go back.’

Police and firefighters were called out to the blaze at around 10.45pm on Saturday.

Sharing the news on Facebook, the former owners wrote: ‘So after 10 months of hard work very long hours and constant obstacles it’s quite annoying to see your place of business end up like this…

‘Time effort gone, money gone, and one of the greatest buildings/oldest pub and heritage gone.’

They added: ‘I’ll let everyone else make their own conclusions on the recent events…’

Lord Ian Austin, the former Labour MP for Dudley North, tweeted that a ‘lane to the pub’ was ‘apparently blocked’ during the fire.

Staffordshire Fire Service station commander Liam Hilton corroborated this report to the BBC, saying ‘mounds of mud and soil’ were piled on the road which prevented appliances from getting direct access to the site.

Detective Inspector Richard Dancey of Staffordshire Police said: ‘This incident has caused a great deal of speculation locally and we understand the significance of the building within the local community.’

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