Pub Odyssey 24

Wednesday 22 June:  COWPER ARMS, LETTY GREEN (Chris Haden, Gerry Murphy,  Elvis Pile, David Room, Geoff Searle (plus dog), Steve Stott, John Westwood)

COMMENT:  I missed this one, being in Poland that day, but because or in spite of that an excellent time was had by all.

The Cowper Arms, the second Cowper Arms to have been visited on the Odyssey, is of course named for what was in the 18th and 19th century the most prominent local aristocratic family, the Earls Cowper of Panshanger.  Bull-baiting is recorded at the site in 1776 (the rural entertainments in the countryside of Merrie England turn your stomach), but the pub, like the other Cowper Arms at Digswell, was founded around 1850.  Both Cowper Arms pubs were closely associated with railway development in the nineteenth century.  So much so that the Letty Green pub was for a while called the Railway Arms and the landlord at the time even made bricks to help build the line- a slightly unusual sideline. The pub continued as a railway hotel till the adjacent branch line closed down in the 1960s.

It seems a good moment to say something about the Cowpers of Panshanger Hall.  Well, not about them as they were a dull bunch but about their wives, relatives and friends who were anything but dull.  The 5th Earl Cowper(died 1837) married a lively lady who was not satisfied with him and took up with Viscount Palmerston (and married Palmerston after Cowper's death).  Palmerston was lively enough.  He was Prime Minister for most of the time between 1855 and his death just short of 81 in 1865.  Earlier in his career, as Foreign Secretary, he had fought wars to force the Chinese to accept British opium. Apart from living in sin with Lady Cowper he was also widely suspected of raping one of Queen Victoria's Maids of Honour. Hard to see him doing well in the modern era of an intrusive press (though when you look at M Strauss-Kahn's alleged behaviour, who knows?).  Lady Cowper/Palmerston was also the sister of Lord Melbourne of Brocket Hall, another Prime Minister, who in turn was married to the barking mad Lady Caroline Lamb. Not many dull moments in high society in East Herts in the nineteenth century.