Monday 24 January: OLD BARGE, Hertford (Malcolm Allen, Chris Haden, Mike Horsman, Elvis Pile, Bob Polydorou, David Room, Andrew Swift, Jeff Tipper)
COMMENT: Nice riverside pub, excellent selection of beers, good food I thought if a bit expensive. Not as old a pub as I'd expected- cottages were constructed on the site in 1802 and (as someone more erudite than me said at lunch) the site was used for a clay pipe factory in the 1820s. By 1837 one of the cottages was an inn called the "Jolly Bargeman". Incidentally, the folly wasn't an island till Hertford Dock (now the Marina) was constructed in the 1850s.
If the Black Horse's claim to fame is its own rugby club, the Old Barge also has sporting eminence. A former landlord, Harry Curtis Garner, once held all national walking records between 1 and 30 miles. In 1891 in New York he established a new world record for the quarter mile- 1 minute and 23 seconds.
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