Wednesday 15 June: LONG ARM AND SHORT ARM, LEMSFORD (Mike Horsman, Chris Haden, Elvis Pile, David Room, Steve Stott)
COMMENT: This was a perfectly good pub with decent food and beer but in no way unusual except for its spectacularly unusual name. Fierce debate rages about where it came from. The most attractive solution (to me) is that it represents a gallows. Inquests used to be held in pubs (see Dickens' novel "Bleak House"), surely they could have hosted hangings as well? All part of the rich tapestry of life in Merrie England. Unfortunately it seems unlikely. More humdrum solutions relate to the configuration of local roads, or to a signal board giving the differing depths of water in the local ford over the River Lea. More amusing is the suggestion that the credit goes to an artist called John Frederick Herring whose early sign showed a coachman extending a long arm to the publican who holds back a glass of ale with a short arm, the message being: "Pay before you drink". But the truth is that no-one really knows where the name came from.
The Long Arm and Short Arm may have had a mysterious name but it was pretty clearly something of a dump in olden times. It was a simple beer shop, the lowest form of pub life, till 1928 when it was one of several pubs in the area which had a licence refused. McMullens had the existing building knocked down and put up the larger building which is still there now.
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