Pub Odyssey 48

Monday 5 December:  THE TILBURY, DATCHWORTH (Malcolm Allen, Chris Haden, Mike Horsman, Chris Parkinson, Elvis Pile, Andrew Swift, Rupert Stanley, Jeff Tipper, Roger Toms)

COMMENT:  Back at the posh end of the market at the Tilbury, but a good occasion with excellent beer and food quickly provided for a big group; but not cheap.  We were honoured by a guest appearance from the deviser of the "Pub Odyssey list" of 87 pubs, Chris Parkinson, who after the labour of drawing up the list wasn't able, because of work, to come to any of the first 47 meetings!  Talk about labouring for the benefit of your fellow man and not yourself!

The Tilbury website is keen to tell you how good they are (and they are good) but doesn't tell you anything about the history of the pub. The pub's site at a crossroads would normally be a sign of great antiquity as would the fact that Datchworth is on a really old road, a Roman road in fact, from St Albans to Puckeridge. However, its not so simple.  There was in the eighteenth century  a pub called the "Tilbury Fort" near Datchworth church- named after Queen Elizabeth I's great speech to her troops at Tilbury on the Thames in 1588 as they waited to repel the Spanish Armada.  In the early nineteenth century the licence was transferred to the current site and the pub then there, called the Three Horse Shoes, was renamed the Tilbury (God knows why).  In 1975, again God knows why, the name was changed to the "The Inn on the Green". Now it's gone back to being the Tilbury.  All a bit of a tangle and its hard to see who gained anything from it.  But be it ever so remote, the connection is with Good Queen Bess and stuffing the Spanish Armada in 1588.

Datchworth has some other entertaining historical oddities.  The last enemy-action incident of any kind on British soil in the Second World War occurred in Datchworth at 9am on 29 March 1945 when a V1 flying bomb struck a nearby field.