Monday 30 January: THE RED LION WOOLMER GREEN (Chris Haden, Mike Horsman, Elvis Pile, Bob Polydorou, Andrew Swift, Roger Toms)
COMMENT: This pub was nice, very cheap, good pub food and remarkably well patrronised for a Monday in January. There weren't many frills but the essentials were fine and obviously they had a winning formula, to judge by the number of punters present. The pub first appears in 1780; the freehold was later held by the famous diarist John Carrington who had as landlady the marvellously named "widow Crow". On January 23 1804, a week more than 208 years before we arrived, Carrington stood outside the Red Lion while the Duchess of Ankester's corpse stopped there on its way to burial in Lincolnshire. "Herce and 3 Coaches" noted Carrington (I love his spelling). Nothing so dramatic while we were there. However, the current building isn't the one Carrington knew.. In 1927 it was rebuilt on its former ground plan. 1927 was a vintage year for pubs in Woolmer Green, the Chequers was rebuilt in the same year apparently. In fact when you look at the two pubs you can see the architectural similarity.
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