Is that a Benskins pub or am I seeing things?

Stopping in the village of Markyate just south of Dunstable at the weekend I spotted something I never thought I would see again – a Benskins pub sign.

Back in the 1980s when I first started frequenting hostelries, nearly all the pubs in Watford and indeed a wider area of Hertfordshire, where the company had bought out smaller brewers, bore the red and gold insignia of the Benskins brand. Although Benskins had been a Watford brewery, it had been taken over by Ind Coope in the 1950s, the brewery closed in 1972 and was demolished in the late 1970s.

Indeed the name had already been phased out and brought back, presumably as a sop to the growth of the Campaign for Real Alea and the demand for greater choice. What passed for Benskins Best Bitter, though, was brewed in Romford not Watford and was what would now be called a session ale. It was a pretty indifferent pint, outshone by Ind Coope's stronger cask beer, Burton Ale. Unless one deliberately sought out one of the town's few Greene King or Courage pubs, or the area's only Free House up in Bushey, going out for a pint in this neck of the woods meant a limited choice of beer (Burton Ale, if you were lucky, Benskins Best, John Bull, Skol lager).

Then in the 1990s everything changed. CAMRA and beer enthusiasts generally had long lamented the way the pub trade was dominated by six big brewers who controlled what beer they could sell and at what price, freezing smaller breweries out of the market and restricting choice for consumers. Breaking up the tied house system by restricting the number of pubs a brewery could own and permitting landlords to stock guest beers looked to be a rare positive reform from the Thatcher government.

Yet as beer writer Roger Protz explains, it didn't work out like that. In the end, new 'pubcos' took over breweries' pub portfolios, acted in just as restrictive a way and, lacking the paternalism of the breweries who at least wanted to sell beer, sold off many perfectly good pubs.

Anyway, the Benskins brand disappeared, beer and pubs alike, so it was a bit like seeing a ghost to spot the Benskins name under the sign of the Sun Inn, Markyate. I even thought for nostalgia's sake I might pop in for a pint. But it was not to be. The pub, a 16th-century listed building, is now a private house, although apparently open until 2013. Even then the sign would have been the only link to Benskins, but seeing it at all was strangely pleasing.