Thursday 11 August: THE GRANDISON, BRAMFIELD (Malcolm Allen, Chris Haden, Mike Horsman, Elvis Pile, David Room, Geoff Searle (plus Sally), Steve Stott, Andrew Swift)
COMMENT: I was very pleased when the Grandison Arms reopened after a seven-year closure (even if for some reason they dropped the "Arms") because this pleasant country pub was, amongst its other advantages, a nice mile-long walk across the fields from my house, just the thing to work up a thirst. And I have had numerous good (though not cheap) meals there, with invariably excellent and often unusual beers. However, on the day of our visit they were not on top of their game as was illustrated by the fact that the pot of tea that Andrew and I asked for only appeared after fifteen minutes and three requests. The food, mine anyway, was pretty good but not in my view sufficiently superior to justify the considerable price differential as against some other hostelries we have been to. On the plus side I thought the beer, enticingly named "Dragons Blood", was indeed excellent and the tea, when it came, was in a pot. This immediately put the Grandison on the side of the angels so far as I am concerned.
When you ask for a pot of tea in most coffee bars and in many upmarket pubs you get a cup with a teabag hanging over the side. Less pretentious pubs (McMullens is excellent in this regard) give you a teapot so you can string your consumption out and feel generally more comfortable. But the Grandison soared to even greater heights. I got a big piece of fudge with my pot of tea. I was so staggered that I threw aside all restraint and had another pot of tea, and more fudge, not a pretty sight from the point of view of my dietician.
The Grandison's name neatly embodies the craziness of the British class system. It is named after the Earls of Grandison who held the manor of Bramfield from 1732 till the death of the second and last Earl Grandison in 1800. However, John Villiers, First Earl Grandison, was Earl Grandison of Limerick. Before Elvis asks me what a Paddy was doing as a Hertfordshire landowner, there was nothing Irish about Lord Grandison, his family were perfectly English and got to the top of the tree because one of his ancestors, Barbara Villiers, had been one of the many who screwed King Charles II (1660-1685). An Irish peerage was perhaps the least you could expect for services to the monarchy such as this. Just to make it even more of a farce if you were an Irish peer you couldn't sit in the House of Lords at Westminster, but you could sit in the House of Commons. Lord Palmerston, the billiard table maestro mentioned in Pub Odyssey 29 (Brocket Arms), was an Irish peer who never sat in the House of Lords but was a member of the House of Commons for more than half a century..
So the Grandison was an eighteenth century pub, probably only a beerhouse, run in John Carrington's time by the "Widow Deards" who in 1803 was robbed of £13 (a lot of money then, probably worth at least £700 now) by a woman who lodged with her- she got £10 back. Rural crime was quite a factor in Napoleonic England, with pubs often involved in some way. The Grandison Arms was also just the place to hold an inquest, as happened in 1806 after a two year old boy drowned in the local pond. I understand that in the current hard times pubs need to diversify so maybe the time is coming to bring back pub-based rural entertainments like bear-baiting, cock fighting, bare-knuckle contests, and of course inquests. It would certainly change the somewhat genteel atmosphere in the modern Grandison quite a bit.
No comments:
Post a Comment