Pub Odyssey 8

Monday 21 February:   THE GEORGE AND DRAGON, Watton at Stone: (Chris Haden, Mike Horsman, Elvis Pile, Bob Polydorou, David Room, Roger Toms, John Westwood.)

COMMENT:  A decent but not cheap meal, and good banter, in a small, ancient but rather chilly room!  The George and Dragon is by 200 years the oldest pub we have yet been to, and I think the first to be a Grade II listed building.  The listing notice says that it is mid to late 16th century, extended and renovated several times since.  To put that in context, it's most likely that either Henry VIII or Elizabeth I was on the throne when it was built (between them these two famous monarchs reigned for 80 years of the 16th century)  The George and Dragon is the first pub on the Odyssey to have been named after a saint, St George the patron saint of England no less. (Up till now the pub names have reflected royal emblems, local landowners, agricultural and commercial activities). This combination of a 16th century origin and a saint's name makes the pub a bit of a puzzle to me.  As everyone knows, Henry VIII initiated and Elizabeth I consolidated the establishment of Protestantism in England.  Amongst other things, this included the democratic idea that everyone had their own personal relationship with God and didn't need the intervention and help of saints to achieve salvation.  So under the Tudors many saints' days were abolished. So why in this Protestant era call your pub after a saint?  Woe betide you if Henry VIII, "that spot of blood and grease on English history", got to hear of it.  So much safer, for example, to call the pub instead the Rose and Crown after the Tudor emblem.  I have this image, probably a fantasy, of someone in the remote village of Watton hating the religious changes which were being forced on him from above and as a small act of defiance calling his pub after a popular saint.  If so I hope he got away with it.

Incidentally, it's always struck me as odd that the patron saint of England should be St George, in reality an aristocrat of the late Roman Empire born in Syria and martyred by the Emperor Diocletian in Nicodemia (Turkey) on 23 April 303AD.  George had no British connection, probably didn't even know where Britannia was, but there you go.  The stuff about rescuing a maiden from a dragon was just a load of nonsense invented by some overheated monk in the Middle Ages.