Tuesday 11 October: THE WOODHALL ARMS PAPILLON, STAPLEFORD (Malcolm Allen, Chris Haden, Mike Horsman,Elvis Pile, David Room, Rupert Stanley, Andrew Swift)
COMMENT: This was a nice meal in a pub which managed more successfully than many to combine restaurant and pub, and did this by keeping them physically separate. The pub side really felt like a pub. The beer was good too. It is, however, a difficult place to say anything about historically because nothing much is recorded. Stapleford is little more than a hamlet and all I can find out about the Woodhall Arms is the fact, hardly surprising, that it had a recorded nineteenth century existence. However, by complete coincidence I had lunch the next day with a lady who was brought up in Stapleford before and during the Second World War. She said, again unsurprisingly, that Stapleford was even smaller then but she added what was to me a genuinely surprising fact. This was that in those days the Beane River which flows past Stapleford was a famous salmon river with access much sought after. Now, of course, the Beane is barely more than a ditch, the reason being the pumping of water to supply the needs of (she thought) Stevenage and Harlow. Its another story which emphasises how agricultural a county Hertfordshire was even up to the Second World War, and how much the new towns changed all that.
The Woodhall Arms is obviously named after the Woodhall estate,owned by the Abel Smith family for many generations, and still at the same size, 7,000 acres, it has been for many years. The Woodhall estate like everywhere else of substance in England reflects some facets of England's astonishing history. The big house, now Heath Mount School, was built by Indian nabobs (that is English merchants who made it big in the early years of British rule in India), the park landscaping is a classic 18th century effort, the walled garden was built by prisoners of war in the Napoleonic Wars, and the great Victorian architect and gardener, Sir Joseph Paxton, builder of the Crystal Palace, got his start working in the kitchen gardens of the Woodhall Estate.
Thursday, 13 October 2011
Thursday, 6 October 2011
Pub Odyssey 39
Thursday 6 October: THE WELLINGTON, WELWYN VILLAGE (Chris Haden, Mike Horsman, Elvis Pile, David Room, Andrew Swift)
COMMENT: "The Wellington is not a pub" said Elvis, and as usual the Sage of Tewin was quite right. The food was fine, the beer was fine- though neither of them was cheap- so it met the requirement and obviously the Wellington's formula works; it was quite busy on a midweek lunchtime with a mixed clientele of all ages from pram-propelled to zimmer-propelled. Anything that does the business and provides proper beer decently presented is fine by me, so I have no complaints, but the Wellington does seem to me to have a very bad case of split personality.
The Wellington is keen to emphasise its long pub history. Outside, painted on the wall, is the following
INN
WELLINGTON
VILLAGE PUB DINING
AD 1352
and there is also a plaque informing you that such famous English types as Samuel Peyps (1633-1703, diarist and omni-shagger), Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-1784, lexicographer and Tory) and David Garrick (1717-1779, actor) stayed there. The plaque also gives you the information that until 1816 it was called the White Swan; obviously the name was changed to celebrate the Duke of Wellington's defeat of the snail-chewing French rascal Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
So far so English, but the split personality arises when you go inside.You might get the impression the snail-chewers had actually won at Waterloo because the place much more closely resembles a French wine bar than an English pub; hence Elvis's point. Well, the beer and food were OK.
However, the fact that the pub/wine bar is named after Wellington (and his boot hangs outside as well) gives me a chance to pay tribute to this very great man who not only put the frogs in their place but also played a big role in the promotion of English beer. This happened as follows. Not everyone knows that the hero of Waterloo later served as a generally unpopular Prime Minister (1828-30) but one whose administration nonetheless had important achievements including the creation of the Metropolitan Police, Catholic Emancipation, and the Beer Act. The Beer Act was the product of the ruthless logic which had made the Iron Duke such a formidable opponent on the battlefield. England was suffering from an epidemic of gin-drinking, very destructive of health prosperity and even life. ("Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence"). The Iron Duke reasoned that banning gin wouldn't work; you had to provide people with a healthier alcoholic alternative. So the Beer Act allowed anybody to brew and sell beer on their premises if they got a licence which only cost £2. Ten years after the act had passed, 50,000 new beer houses had opened! And it did do something to reduce the gin problem. So raise your next pint to that unusual phenomenon, a politician who made drinking easier and cheaper. Messrs Cameron and Osborne are, of course, quite the reverse.
COMMENT: "The Wellington is not a pub" said Elvis, and as usual the Sage of Tewin was quite right. The food was fine, the beer was fine- though neither of them was cheap- so it met the requirement and obviously the Wellington's formula works; it was quite busy on a midweek lunchtime with a mixed clientele of all ages from pram-propelled to zimmer-propelled. Anything that does the business and provides proper beer decently presented is fine by me, so I have no complaints, but the Wellington does seem to me to have a very bad case of split personality.
The Wellington is keen to emphasise its long pub history. Outside, painted on the wall, is the following
INN
WELLINGTON
VILLAGE PUB DINING
AD 1352
and there is also a plaque informing you that such famous English types as Samuel Peyps (1633-1703, diarist and omni-shagger), Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-1784, lexicographer and Tory) and David Garrick (1717-1779, actor) stayed there. The plaque also gives you the information that until 1816 it was called the White Swan; obviously the name was changed to celebrate the Duke of Wellington's defeat of the snail-chewing French rascal Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
So far so English, but the split personality arises when you go inside.You might get the impression the snail-chewers had actually won at Waterloo because the place much more closely resembles a French wine bar than an English pub; hence Elvis's point. Well, the beer and food were OK.
However, the fact that the pub/wine bar is named after Wellington (and his boot hangs outside as well) gives me a chance to pay tribute to this very great man who not only put the frogs in their place but also played a big role in the promotion of English beer. This happened as follows. Not everyone knows that the hero of Waterloo later served as a generally unpopular Prime Minister (1828-30) but one whose administration nonetheless had important achievements including the creation of the Metropolitan Police, Catholic Emancipation, and the Beer Act. The Beer Act was the product of the ruthless logic which had made the Iron Duke such a formidable opponent on the battlefield. England was suffering from an epidemic of gin-drinking, very destructive of health prosperity and even life. ("Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence"). The Iron Duke reasoned that banning gin wouldn't work; you had to provide people with a healthier alcoholic alternative. So the Beer Act allowed anybody to brew and sell beer on their premises if they got a licence which only cost £2. Ten years after the act had passed, 50,000 new beer houses had opened! And it did do something to reduce the gin problem. So raise your next pint to that unusual phenomenon, a politician who made drinking easier and cheaper. Messrs Cameron and Osborne are, of course, quite the reverse.
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