Tuesday 12 April: WHITE HORSE, HERTFORD (Chris Haden, Mike Horsman, Elvis Pile- welcome back Elvis- Bob Polydorou, Andrew Swift, John Westwood).
COMMENT: probably the oldest pub yet visited, as the Fullers website says it goes back to the 14th century. As all properly educated persons know, this was the century in which the Scots stuffed the English (Bannockburn 1314, the most important date in European history), and in which the Black Death reduced the population of the world by one-third (1348-50). But in these dark days there was a bright side, they opened the White Horse.
Going inside the White Horse it does feel really old and not well suited for people over 5ft 10 inches. Not difficult to believe that our ancestors were shorter! Andrew needed to watch his head, and although it's a shame that David Room couldn't make it the White Horse couldn't be described as ideal territory for him either. Otherwise it was good, with nine real beers, decent food and friendly service though I nearly leapt to the low ceiling from a sitting start when the fire alarm went off as our food was being cooked!
Possibly the conversation was a shade vulgar. There was a good deal about the sexual outlook of teenagers, particularly teenagers from Essex (some of us are spending too much time in front of reality TV) plus more information about the Crazy Sexy Club of Frankfurt than was probably good for us. I saw a party of elderly people come into the pub for lunch and felt perhaps we should be toning the conversation down a bit; but when I went past them to get to the loo, I realised that at average age about 64 we were older than they were!
However, my big Pub Odyssey moment this week came when researching stuff about Charles Dickens and pubs (see Pub Odyssey 14). Imagine my delight when I saw in his novel "Martin Chuzzlewit" how Mrs Gamp, the drunken midwife, drank a pint of the "celebrated staggering ale, or Real Old Brighton Tipper, at supper". The Thomas Tipper brewery of Sussex produced ale where if anyone drank three pints "may the powers that are above preserve him". Sadly, the Tipper brewery closed in 1911. Any relation Jeff?
Tuesday, 12 April 2011
Thursday, 7 April 2011
Pub Odyssey 14
Tuesday 5 April: OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, Broadwater Crescent, Stevenage ( Malcolm Allen, Mike Horsman, Gerry Murphy, Bob Polydorou, Andrew Swift)
COMMENT: This is a pub much beloved of the local CAMRA branch, and I thought it encapsulated quite neatly the strengths and weaknesses of the CAMRA approach. On the plus side, the beer was excellent and I quite liked the decor and the Dickens memorabilia scattered about. On the minus side, the food options were very limited and if like Malcolm you are a vegetarian a cheese sandwich is what you get- and all you get. I wasn't too thrilled by the service either. Twice I approached the bar to make an order and the bar staff, engaged on something else (though the pub wasn't that busy) walked away. Good beer is critically important, and I am very grateful for what CAMRA has done and continues to do on that front, but OMF is the sort of place that tends to confirm the suspicion that in assessing pubs CAMRA consider there own obsessions rather than more general attractiveness.
Be that as it may, I did enjoy our visit, the company as always being excellent and the pub an interesting place in unusual ways. From the exterior it lacks all architectural charm, looking what it is, a basic almost prefab construction to service a post-war housing estate. But what it actually represents is the power of a man's name and reputation. The man is Charles Dickens (1812-70), the greatest of all English novelists and the greatest writer of any form of English after Shakespeare. Dickens was a man of London and Kent, but he had a local presence; he was a friend of Lord Lytton of Knebworth, another successful Victorian novelist- in fact Dickens gave readings of his novels at Knebworth House. When Lord Lytton decided to set up a pub in Broadwater (a fine late Victorian building, long since gone but pictured on the walls in the current pub) he had it named after the last completed novel of his friend Charles Dickens. In addition Dickens himself, always a generous and open-handed man, set up at some stage near there a sort of superior almshouse for journalists and writers fallen on hard times. Lord Lytton's pub and the almshouse are long gone, but when a new pub was created on the new housing estate Dickens' name still had the power for the pub to be called "Our Mutual Friend".
Although it seems to have been Dickens' general fame and local activities which led to all this, he did in fact love pubs. Dickens (like Shakespeare too) was fascinated by English inns, taverns and pubs, their drink, food and culture. He wrote endlessly about all these things; it has been calculated that 166 public houses of all types from grand to extremely seedy appear in his writings, some inventions of his imagination but many of them real places- we will meet at least two later on in the Odyssey.
COMMENT: This is a pub much beloved of the local CAMRA branch, and I thought it encapsulated quite neatly the strengths and weaknesses of the CAMRA approach. On the plus side, the beer was excellent and I quite liked the decor and the Dickens memorabilia scattered about. On the minus side, the food options were very limited and if like Malcolm you are a vegetarian a cheese sandwich is what you get- and all you get. I wasn't too thrilled by the service either. Twice I approached the bar to make an order and the bar staff, engaged on something else (though the pub wasn't that busy) walked away. Good beer is critically important, and I am very grateful for what CAMRA has done and continues to do on that front, but OMF is the sort of place that tends to confirm the suspicion that in assessing pubs CAMRA consider there own obsessions rather than more general attractiveness.
Be that as it may, I did enjoy our visit, the company as always being excellent and the pub an interesting place in unusual ways. From the exterior it lacks all architectural charm, looking what it is, a basic almost prefab construction to service a post-war housing estate. But what it actually represents is the power of a man's name and reputation. The man is Charles Dickens (1812-70), the greatest of all English novelists and the greatest writer of any form of English after Shakespeare. Dickens was a man of London and Kent, but he had a local presence; he was a friend of Lord Lytton of Knebworth, another successful Victorian novelist- in fact Dickens gave readings of his novels at Knebworth House. When Lord Lytton decided to set up a pub in Broadwater (a fine late Victorian building, long since gone but pictured on the walls in the current pub) he had it named after the last completed novel of his friend Charles Dickens. In addition Dickens himself, always a generous and open-handed man, set up at some stage near there a sort of superior almshouse for journalists and writers fallen on hard times. Lord Lytton's pub and the almshouse are long gone, but when a new pub was created on the new housing estate Dickens' name still had the power for the pub to be called "Our Mutual Friend".
Although it seems to have been Dickens' general fame and local activities which led to all this, he did in fact love pubs. Dickens (like Shakespeare too) was fascinated by English inns, taverns and pubs, their drink, food and culture. He wrote endlessly about all these things; it has been calculated that 166 public houses of all types from grand to extremely seedy appear in his writings, some inventions of his imagination but many of them real places- we will meet at least two later on in the Odyssey.
Pub Odyssey 13
Tuesday 29 March: THE HORNS, Bulls Green (Chris Haden, Gerry Murphy, Bob Polydorou, Andrew Swift, Roger Toms)
COMMENT: I missed this one, walking the Thames Path with Anne (lots of nice pubs on that too). The Horns is a really ancient pub, probably the oldest we have yet been to. It's dated to 1543 (roughly the same age as the George and Dragon, Watton) but details of construction of the building suggest it is 100 years older than that. It is relatively upmarket now, but for much of its long life seems to have been the lowest form of pub life, far below inns and taverns, a simple beer house serving the hamlet of Bulls Green. Like many such, it also doubled, or trebled or quadrupled, as an auction room, traders meeting and bargaining post, livery stables, farmhouse. Its basic nature is suggested by the fact that as recently as the 1920s there was a hayloft over the main bar, and until the introduction of piped water to the parish in 1915 most of the water used daily would have come from the nearby moat (the last remnant of which is the small pond opposite). In such grim and often unhealthy suroundings our rural ancestors lived their lives and took their pleasure. The Horns is a pleasant place now where our team enjoyed their food (getting in just ahead of a big crowd of punters, always a pleasure to see); a hundred years ago it might have been a somewhat different story.
COMMENT: I missed this one, walking the Thames Path with Anne (lots of nice pubs on that too). The Horns is a really ancient pub, probably the oldest we have yet been to. It's dated to 1543 (roughly the same age as the George and Dragon, Watton) but details of construction of the building suggest it is 100 years older than that. It is relatively upmarket now, but for much of its long life seems to have been the lowest form of pub life, far below inns and taverns, a simple beer house serving the hamlet of Bulls Green. Like many such, it also doubled, or trebled or quadrupled, as an auction room, traders meeting and bargaining post, livery stables, farmhouse. Its basic nature is suggested by the fact that as recently as the 1920s there was a hayloft over the main bar, and until the introduction of piped water to the parish in 1915 most of the water used daily would have come from the nearby moat (the last remnant of which is the small pond opposite). In such grim and often unhealthy suroundings our rural ancestors lived their lives and took their pleasure. The Horns is a pleasant place now where our team enjoyed their food (getting in just ahead of a big crowd of punters, always a pleasure to see); a hundred years ago it might have been a somewhat different story.
Wednesday, 23 March 2011
Pub Odyssey 12
Tuesday 29 March: BAKER ARMS, BAYFORD ( Malcolm Allen, Chris Haden, Mike Horsman, Gerry Murphy, Elvis Pile, Bob Polydorou, Andrew Swift, Roger Toms, John Westwood).
COMMENT: Six (idle but shrewd) drove to this pub, three (mentally challenged) cycled there. It's uphill all the way, and if it is less than five miles from Tewin, even as the crow flies, I will eat my bicycle. I am not a crow and all I know is that I did eight miles in all and spent the last two behind Andrew's rear wheel climbing pretty steeply from the Lower Hatfield Road to the pub. When I got there the first pint barely touched my sides on the way down. The heat was on for me in other ways too. Call me sensitive, but I got the impression that some of our gallant band were becoming unnecessarily obsessed with the implications of going out to lunch with sweaty men in tights.
The Baker Arms turned out to be a McMullans pub with, yet again, decent pub food and a nice barmaid/waitress who was not fazed by our bizarre behaviour as we paid the bill. Andrew Swift's personalised cashback system may not have puzzled her, but it certainly baffled me at the other end of the table.
The Baker Arms has nothing to do with baking, despite the fancy baker's hat embossed on the polo shirts of the barpersons. It's named for the Baker family who were the local landowners, and built the row of cottages which includes the pub in the mid 19th century. A little surprisingly, the pub is a grade 2 listed building. I looked the Bakers up and they seemed an uninteresting bunch. There most prominent member was Sir William Baker, a wealthy merchant who in the 18th century attended Parliament for a few years and didn't do much there except hang around the Kit-Cat Club. What they did at the Club I don't know, except that it didn't have to do with chocolate. (It also didn't go in for uninhibited all round sexual intercourse and kinky dressing as does the Kit-Cat Club of Berlin today.) This lack of pzazz is very disappointing; surely the Bakers could have produced something better than a mere malingering fop given the cast list of homicidal monarchs, crazy politician's wives, mad bad poets, insane walking champions, and juvenile architects connected with previous pubs on the Odyssey. Still, you can't win them all.
COMMENT: Six (idle but shrewd) drove to this pub, three (mentally challenged) cycled there. It's uphill all the way, and if it is less than five miles from Tewin, even as the crow flies, I will eat my bicycle. I am not a crow and all I know is that I did eight miles in all and spent the last two behind Andrew's rear wheel climbing pretty steeply from the Lower Hatfield Road to the pub. When I got there the first pint barely touched my sides on the way down. The heat was on for me in other ways too. Call me sensitive, but I got the impression that some of our gallant band were becoming unnecessarily obsessed with the implications of going out to lunch with sweaty men in tights.
The Baker Arms turned out to be a McMullans pub with, yet again, decent pub food and a nice barmaid/waitress who was not fazed by our bizarre behaviour as we paid the bill. Andrew Swift's personalised cashback system may not have puzzled her, but it certainly baffled me at the other end of the table.
The Baker Arms has nothing to do with baking, despite the fancy baker's hat embossed on the polo shirts of the barpersons. It's named for the Baker family who were the local landowners, and built the row of cottages which includes the pub in the mid 19th century. A little surprisingly, the pub is a grade 2 listed building. I looked the Bakers up and they seemed an uninteresting bunch. There most prominent member was Sir William Baker, a wealthy merchant who in the 18th century attended Parliament for a few years and didn't do much there except hang around the Kit-Cat Club. What they did at the Club I don't know, except that it didn't have to do with chocolate. (It also didn't go in for uninhibited all round sexual intercourse and kinky dressing as does the Kit-Cat Club of Berlin today.) This lack of pzazz is very disappointing; surely the Bakers could have produced something better than a mere malingering fop given the cast list of homicidal monarchs, crazy politician's wives, mad bad poets, insane walking champions, and juvenile architects connected with previous pubs on the Odyssey. Still, you can't win them all.
Thursday, 17 March 2011
Pub Odyssey 11
Tuesday 15 March: LYTTON ARMS, Old Knebworth (Malcolm Allen, Chris Haden, Mike Horsman, Elvis Pile, Bob Polydorou, Steve Stott, Andrew Swift, Roger Toms, John Westwood)
COMMENT: A good turnout for this attractive free house, famous for its range of real ales. It's also the first pub on the Odyssey allegedly designed by a famous architect. This was Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944) who created New Delhi, many English country houses, the Cenotaph in Whitehall, the rather creepy Monument to the Fallen at Thiepval in Flanders, etc etc. I say "allegedly" because although its superficially quite plausible that Lutyens did the work (he married a member of the Lytton family of Knebworth House and designed other buildings in Knebworth including one of the churches) the dates don't seem right. The Lytton Arms website states the pub was built around 1877 (replacing another that is now a private house next door). However, in 1877 Lutyens was only eight years old and talented though he was I think designing a pub while still in junior school is a bit precocious. Probably Lutyens did a later makeover for the pub. However, whoever was responsible, they did a good job.
The Lytton Arms is in the "lucky dip" section of the Good Pub Guide as is the Waggoners at Ayot Green. Of the eleven pubs so far visited on the Odyssey, only the Old Barge (Hertford) gets into CAMRA's Good Beer Guide. Its interesting that eight of the eleven don't get into either of my two bibles for pub going yet I would say that everywhere we have had good honest pub food and good beer. And although we are an ill-disciplined crew given to turning up in the wrong numbers and never on time, everywhere we have met only friendliness, good humour, courteous efficient and quick service. Makes you proud to be British!
COMMENT: A good turnout for this attractive free house, famous for its range of real ales. It's also the first pub on the Odyssey allegedly designed by a famous architect. This was Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944) who created New Delhi, many English country houses, the Cenotaph in Whitehall, the rather creepy Monument to the Fallen at Thiepval in Flanders, etc etc. I say "allegedly" because although its superficially quite plausible that Lutyens did the work (he married a member of the Lytton family of Knebworth House and designed other buildings in Knebworth including one of the churches) the dates don't seem right. The Lytton Arms website states the pub was built around 1877 (replacing another that is now a private house next door). However, in 1877 Lutyens was only eight years old and talented though he was I think designing a pub while still in junior school is a bit precocious. Probably Lutyens did a later makeover for the pub. However, whoever was responsible, they did a good job.
The Lytton Arms is in the "lucky dip" section of the Good Pub Guide as is the Waggoners at Ayot Green. Of the eleven pubs so far visited on the Odyssey, only the Old Barge (Hertford) gets into CAMRA's Good Beer Guide. Its interesting that eight of the eleven don't get into either of my two bibles for pub going yet I would say that everywhere we have had good honest pub food and good beer. And although we are an ill-disciplined crew given to turning up in the wrong numbers and never on time, everywhere we have met only friendliness, good humour, courteous efficient and quick service. Makes you proud to be British!
Pub Odyssey 10
Wednesday 9 March: BRIDGE HOUSE, HERTFORD (Chris Haden, Elvis Pile, Roger Toms)
COMMENT: An attenuated turnout this time with a lot of us away; three (Malcolm, David, Jeff) on a bike maintenance course; myself in Malta; and Steve in Bangladesh (where England collapsed before the cricketing power that is Ireland: later England bowed down before the invincible machine that is Bangladesh). The bike maintenance crew have, I regret to say, suffered a lot of ragging from uncouth non-cyclists who do not realise, as I do, that cyclists represent all that is best and finest in Britain today. Forget the mocking riff-raff! They only sound like Jeremy Clarkson, a fate too terrible to contemplate.
Anyway, getting back to the Bridge House, formerly known as the Sele Arms, the reports were of good and not expensive food, and a good time had by the small turnout. But the pub is interesting in other ways. So far on the Odyssey we have seen 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th century pubs and a couple of modern ones (post 1975). The Bridge House is clearly a "between the wars" pub. The invaluable web source, deadpubs.co.uk, states tersely that this pub "may not have been established till the 1930s". To me the Bridge House, seen from the outside, screams "1920-1939". The inter-war years were hard for pubs and breweries with rising taxes and an economic depression (sound familiar?) and the brewers reacted by trying to create new-style pubs which imitated then popular architectural styles, so you get "arts and crafts" pubs, stockbroker tudor pubs, even art deco pubs. The Bridge House is clearly stockbroker tudor; seen from the outside it could be a large inter-war house in Brookmans Park or somewhere similar. These pubs were often called "road houses" because they were situated at strategic points on the new highways to catch the hugely increasing car traffic (few seemed to worry about drink driving in those days). However, in the case of the Bridge House, I suspect it might better be called a "railway house"; it must surely have been set up to catch the punters emerging from Hertford North railway station opposite, opened in 1924.
COMMENT: An attenuated turnout this time with a lot of us away; three (Malcolm, David, Jeff) on a bike maintenance course; myself in Malta; and Steve in Bangladesh (where England collapsed before the cricketing power that is Ireland: later England bowed down before the invincible machine that is Bangladesh). The bike maintenance crew have, I regret to say, suffered a lot of ragging from uncouth non-cyclists who do not realise, as I do, that cyclists represent all that is best and finest in Britain today. Forget the mocking riff-raff! They only sound like Jeremy Clarkson, a fate too terrible to contemplate.
Anyway, getting back to the Bridge House, formerly known as the Sele Arms, the reports were of good and not expensive food, and a good time had by the small turnout. But the pub is interesting in other ways. So far on the Odyssey we have seen 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th century pubs and a couple of modern ones (post 1975). The Bridge House is clearly a "between the wars" pub. The invaluable web source, deadpubs.co.uk, states tersely that this pub "may not have been established till the 1930s". To me the Bridge House, seen from the outside, screams "1920-1939". The inter-war years were hard for pubs and breweries with rising taxes and an economic depression (sound familiar?) and the brewers reacted by trying to create new-style pubs which imitated then popular architectural styles, so you get "arts and crafts" pubs, stockbroker tudor pubs, even art deco pubs. The Bridge House is clearly stockbroker tudor; seen from the outside it could be a large inter-war house in Brookmans Park or somewhere similar. These pubs were often called "road houses" because they were situated at strategic points on the new highways to catch the hugely increasing car traffic (few seemed to worry about drink driving in those days). However, in the case of the Bridge House, I suspect it might better be called a "railway house"; it must surely have been set up to catch the punters emerging from Hertford North railway station opposite, opened in 1924.
Thursday, 3 March 2011
Pub Odyssey 9
Wednesday 2 March: SUN, LEMSFORD (Chris Haden, Mike Horsman, Gerry Murphy, Elvis Pile, Bob Polydorou, David Room, John Westwood)
COMMENT: For me the epitome of a middle-of-the-road pub with decent food (and lots of it) but nothing particularly unusual. The most unusual things we saw were the implausibly, incredibly youthful photos of Gerry, Chris Parkinson and (yes, its true) Elvis brought along by John Westwood.
The Sun is another stagecoach pub. From the 1600s to 1833 the "Old Great North Road" from London to York passed through Lemsford which was a day's coach ride from London. In those days Lemsford had four coaching inns for the stagecoach traffic, two survive today as the Sun and the Long and Short Arm. Right at the end of these glory days, in 1824, the wife of a future Prime Minister, Lady Caroline Lamb ("mad bad and dangerous to know", so different from Cherie Blair or Mrs Cameron) watched from the Brocket estate as the funeral cortege of her lover Lord Byron (also mad, bad and dangerous to know) passed through Lemsford. But in 1833 a bypass was cut through from Stanborough to Ayot Green and Lemsford lost its pivotal place on the Great North Road.
The Sun is a common pub name, popular perhaps because there's nothing easier than sticking up a pub sign with a big yellow blob on it- easy to do, easy to recognise. But it is also the royal emblem of King Edward IV (1461-83), grandfather of Henry VIII, like him in appearance (though no beard) but also like him in an unfortunate attitude towards women and general bloodthirstiness. Henry scored high in the bloodthirstiness stages by chopping off the heads of two of his six wives (Edward had only one wife who managed to survive, despite his partiality for London tradesmen's wives) but Edward had a bloodthirstiness trump card. Even Henry VIII couldn't match Edward's performance when, dissatisfied with his brother's political conduct, he had him drowned in a butt of Malmesey wine. What a way to go! But both Edward and Henry had to acknowlege top-level bloodthirstiness in the performance of their great ancestor, Roger Mortimer first earl of March, who apparently had King Edward II murdered by having a red hot poker stuck up his anus. Never a dull moment with members of that family. Edward IV and Henry VIII got the reward their fame deserved, remembered in countless "Sun" and "Kings Head" pub signs all over England.
COMMENT: For me the epitome of a middle-of-the-road pub with decent food (and lots of it) but nothing particularly unusual. The most unusual things we saw were the implausibly, incredibly youthful photos of Gerry, Chris Parkinson and (yes, its true) Elvis brought along by John Westwood.
The Sun is another stagecoach pub. From the 1600s to 1833 the "Old Great North Road" from London to York passed through Lemsford which was a day's coach ride from London. In those days Lemsford had four coaching inns for the stagecoach traffic, two survive today as the Sun and the Long and Short Arm. Right at the end of these glory days, in 1824, the wife of a future Prime Minister, Lady Caroline Lamb ("mad bad and dangerous to know", so different from Cherie Blair or Mrs Cameron) watched from the Brocket estate as the funeral cortege of her lover Lord Byron (also mad, bad and dangerous to know) passed through Lemsford. But in 1833 a bypass was cut through from Stanborough to Ayot Green and Lemsford lost its pivotal place on the Great North Road.
The Sun is a common pub name, popular perhaps because there's nothing easier than sticking up a pub sign with a big yellow blob on it- easy to do, easy to recognise. But it is also the royal emblem of King Edward IV (1461-83), grandfather of Henry VIII, like him in appearance (though no beard) but also like him in an unfortunate attitude towards women and general bloodthirstiness. Henry scored high in the bloodthirstiness stages by chopping off the heads of two of his six wives (Edward had only one wife who managed to survive, despite his partiality for London tradesmen's wives) but Edward had a bloodthirstiness trump card. Even Henry VIII couldn't match Edward's performance when, dissatisfied with his brother's political conduct, he had him drowned in a butt of Malmesey wine. What a way to go! But both Edward and Henry had to acknowlege top-level bloodthirstiness in the performance of their great ancestor, Roger Mortimer first earl of March, who apparently had King Edward II murdered by having a red hot poker stuck up his anus. Never a dull moment with members of that family. Edward IV and Henry VIII got the reward their fame deserved, remembered in countless "Sun" and "Kings Head" pub signs all over England.
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