Tuesday 12 July: THE WOODMAN, CHAPMORE END (Chris Haden, Mike Horsman, Elvis Pile, Steve Stott, Andrew Swift, Roger Toms, John Westwood)
COMMENT: I said that last week's pub, the Rose and Crown in Tewin, was a true village pub uncontaminated by forces of progress like stagecoach routes or railways; but compared with the Woodman the Rose is the last word in metropolitan sophistication. The Woodman is first recorded in 1851 as a basic little two up/two down timber framed lath and plaster building with stables where the car park now is. Needless to say it was only a beerhouse. Previous to its reincarnation as a pub, it is rumoured to have been a slaughterhouse. I've seen a picture of it in 1908, looking very little different from now.
In such a truly rural venue "the Woodman" is a good name for a pub (though there are plenty of Woodmans in London, twenty-five in 2006). The woodman was an important rural figure, tending the woods and forests as well as cutting down trees. Even now, you really wouldn't have been surprised if a man in a smock with an axe had walked into the Chapmore End pub while we were having lunch. The pub's layout (small cramped rooms) screamed of a bygone era and would you believe it, the beer was served by gravity from the barrel. This is rare indeed today in pubs (though funnily enough the very next day I was in another pub on the Thames near Oxford which also served beer by gravity). Not everyone liked the beer; my Greene King IPA was very good but the "Ale Fresco" went down badly with some customers. That, though, might relate to the beer's basic taste rather than its presentation The food was fine, in the tradition of solid honest pub grub.
Friday, 15 July 2011
Tuesday, 12 July 2011
Pub Odyssey 26
Monday 4 July: ROSE AND CROWN, TEWIN (Malcolm Allen, Mike Horsman, Elvis Pile, Bob Polydorou, David Room, Andrew Swift, Jeff Tipper, Roger Toms, John Westwood)
COMMENT: The Rose and Crown, our local, is an old and famous Hertfordshire pub which according to the History of Tewin (published 2009) "is thought to have been built in about 1650 on the front of an older building that stood on the site and which now forms part of the present kitchens". The History makes the point that the Rose is probably, even now, about the same size as it was when built in 1650 and also that it was a true village pub, not on a major coaching route and bypassed by the railways. This rural nature is further illustrated by the fact that the landlords often described themselves as "publican and farmer", running a small farm or smallholding in conjunction with the main business of selling alcohol.
The pub's fame relates.to the period of the Napoleonic Wars, when it features almost daily in the remarkable diaries (1798-1810) of John Carrington of Bacon's Farm, Bramfield. Carrington was a great man for food and drink and his son Jack held the tenancy at the Rose and Crown from 1791 to 1833. The elder Carrington was often in the Rose with or without friends, eating enormous meals and drinking impressive amounts for a man in his seventies. Both Carringtons were important local figures and the Rose seems to have been a big operation. In June 1805 a beer engine was installed there; beer engines were very recent inventions and rarely seen at that date outside London. The younger Carrington, the landlord, dealt in big money; for instance he recorded that by 1812 he had lost £3000 (a vast sum in those days) due to the bad behaviour of his brother-in-law. At that stage the Rose was certainly far more important than the Plume of Feathers, laconically described by the older Carrington in 1799 as an "alehouse". Nowadays the boot is very much on the other foot. I don't think many would argue with the proposition that in the last couple of decades the Plume has been very much the more successful pub.
The Rose had just acquired a new landlord when we arrived there and the pub did fine, producing for us good beer and good honest pub food. Let's hope he is a success.
COMMENT: The Rose and Crown, our local, is an old and famous Hertfordshire pub which according to the History of Tewin (published 2009) "is thought to have been built in about 1650 on the front of an older building that stood on the site and which now forms part of the present kitchens". The History makes the point that the Rose is probably, even now, about the same size as it was when built in 1650 and also that it was a true village pub, not on a major coaching route and bypassed by the railways. This rural nature is further illustrated by the fact that the landlords often described themselves as "publican and farmer", running a small farm or smallholding in conjunction with the main business of selling alcohol.
The pub's fame relates.to the period of the Napoleonic Wars, when it features almost daily in the remarkable diaries (1798-1810) of John Carrington of Bacon's Farm, Bramfield. Carrington was a great man for food and drink and his son Jack held the tenancy at the Rose and Crown from 1791 to 1833. The elder Carrington was often in the Rose with or without friends, eating enormous meals and drinking impressive amounts for a man in his seventies. Both Carringtons were important local figures and the Rose seems to have been a big operation. In June 1805 a beer engine was installed there; beer engines were very recent inventions and rarely seen at that date outside London. The younger Carrington, the landlord, dealt in big money; for instance he recorded that by 1812 he had lost £3000 (a vast sum in those days) due to the bad behaviour of his brother-in-law. At that stage the Rose was certainly far more important than the Plume of Feathers, laconically described by the older Carrington in 1799 as an "alehouse". Nowadays the boot is very much on the other foot. I don't think many would argue with the proposition that in the last couple of decades the Plume has been very much the more successful pub.
The Rose had just acquired a new landlord when we arrived there and the pub did fine, producing for us good beer and good honest pub food. Let's hope he is a success.
Monday, 11 July 2011
Pub Odyssey 25
Tuesday 28 June: DUNCOMBE ARMS, HERTFORD (Malcolm Allen, Chris Haden, Mike Horsman, Gerry Murphy, Elvis Pile, Steve Stott, Andrew Swift)
COMMENT: a decent cheap lunch in a town centre pub. The Duncombe Arms is named after a local MP, Thomas Slingsby Duncombe (MP for Hertford 1826-32, afterwards MP for Finsbury 1834-61). Like some more modern MPs, he combined radical politics with snazzy dressing, dubious finances, loose women and a penchant for publicity. Naturally all this endeared him to the electorate. We enjoyed our lunch, with the interviewer in our midst establishing that our very nice and unusually on-the-ball waitress was actually a student waiting to take up her university course. Probably not the first or last time we will meet that on the Odyssey..
COMMENT: a decent cheap lunch in a town centre pub. The Duncombe Arms is named after a local MP, Thomas Slingsby Duncombe (MP for Hertford 1826-32, afterwards MP for Finsbury 1834-61). Like some more modern MPs, he combined radical politics with snazzy dressing, dubious finances, loose women and a penchant for publicity. Naturally all this endeared him to the electorate. We enjoyed our lunch, with the interviewer in our midst establishing that our very nice and unusually on-the-ball waitress was actually a student waiting to take up her university course. Probably not the first or last time we will meet that on the Odyssey..
Wednesday, 6 July 2011
Pub Odyssey 24
Wednesday 22 June: COWPER ARMS, LETTY GREEN (Chris Haden, Gerry Murphy, Elvis Pile, David Room, Geoff Searle (plus dog), Steve Stott, John Westwood)
COMMENT: I missed this one, being in Poland that day, but because or in spite of that an excellent time was had by all.
The Cowper Arms, the second Cowper Arms to have been visited on the Odyssey, is of course named for what was in the 18th and 19th century the most prominent local aristocratic family, the Earls Cowper of Panshanger. Bull-baiting is recorded at the site in 1776 (the rural entertainments in the countryside of Merrie England turn your stomach), but the pub, like the other Cowper Arms at Digswell, was founded around 1850. Both Cowper Arms pubs were closely associated with railway development in the nineteenth century. So much so that the Letty Green pub was for a while called the Railway Arms and the landlord at the time even made bricks to help build the line- a slightly unusual sideline. The pub continued as a railway hotel till the adjacent branch line closed down in the 1960s.
It seems a good moment to say something about the Cowpers of Panshanger Hall. Well, not about them as they were a dull bunch but about their wives, relatives and friends who were anything but dull. The 5th Earl Cowper(died 1837) married a lively lady who was not satisfied with him and took up with Viscount Palmerston (and married Palmerston after Cowper's death). Palmerston was lively enough. He was Prime Minister for most of the time between 1855 and his death just short of 81 in 1865. Earlier in his career, as Foreign Secretary, he had fought wars to force the Chinese to accept British opium. Apart from living in sin with Lady Cowper he was also widely suspected of raping one of Queen Victoria's Maids of Honour. Hard to see him doing well in the modern era of an intrusive press (though when you look at M Strauss-Kahn's alleged behaviour, who knows?). Lady Cowper/Palmerston was also the sister of Lord Melbourne of Brocket Hall, another Prime Minister, who in turn was married to the barking mad Lady Caroline Lamb. Not many dull moments in high society in East Herts in the nineteenth century.
COMMENT: I missed this one, being in Poland that day, but because or in spite of that an excellent time was had by all.
The Cowper Arms, the second Cowper Arms to have been visited on the Odyssey, is of course named for what was in the 18th and 19th century the most prominent local aristocratic family, the Earls Cowper of Panshanger. Bull-baiting is recorded at the site in 1776 (the rural entertainments in the countryside of Merrie England turn your stomach), but the pub, like the other Cowper Arms at Digswell, was founded around 1850. Both Cowper Arms pubs were closely associated with railway development in the nineteenth century. So much so that the Letty Green pub was for a while called the Railway Arms and the landlord at the time even made bricks to help build the line- a slightly unusual sideline. The pub continued as a railway hotel till the adjacent branch line closed down in the 1960s.
It seems a good moment to say something about the Cowpers of Panshanger Hall. Well, not about them as they were a dull bunch but about their wives, relatives and friends who were anything but dull. The 5th Earl Cowper(died 1837) married a lively lady who was not satisfied with him and took up with Viscount Palmerston (and married Palmerston after Cowper's death). Palmerston was lively enough. He was Prime Minister for most of the time between 1855 and his death just short of 81 in 1865. Earlier in his career, as Foreign Secretary, he had fought wars to force the Chinese to accept British opium. Apart from living in sin with Lady Cowper he was also widely suspected of raping one of Queen Victoria's Maids of Honour. Hard to see him doing well in the modern era of an intrusive press (though when you look at M Strauss-Kahn's alleged behaviour, who knows?). Lady Cowper/Palmerston was also the sister of Lord Melbourne of Brocket Hall, another Prime Minister, who in turn was married to the barking mad Lady Caroline Lamb. Not many dull moments in high society in East Herts in the nineteenth century.
Monday, 4 July 2011
Pub Odyssey 23
Wednesday 15 June: LONG ARM AND SHORT ARM, LEMSFORD (Mike Horsman, Chris Haden, Elvis Pile, David Room, Steve Stott)
COMMENT: This was a perfectly good pub with decent food and beer but in no way unusual except for its spectacularly unusual name. Fierce debate rages about where it came from. The most attractive solution (to me) is that it represents a gallows. Inquests used to be held in pubs (see Dickens' novel "Bleak House"), surely they could have hosted hangings as well? All part of the rich tapestry of life in Merrie England. Unfortunately it seems unlikely. More humdrum solutions relate to the configuration of local roads, or to a signal board giving the differing depths of water in the local ford over the River Lea. More amusing is the suggestion that the credit goes to an artist called John Frederick Herring whose early sign showed a coachman extending a long arm to the publican who holds back a glass of ale with a short arm, the message being: "Pay before you drink". But the truth is that no-one really knows where the name came from.
The Long Arm and Short Arm may have had a mysterious name but it was pretty clearly something of a dump in olden times. It was a simple beer shop, the lowest form of pub life, till 1928 when it was one of several pubs in the area which had a licence refused. McMullens had the existing building knocked down and put up the larger building which is still there now.
COMMENT: This was a perfectly good pub with decent food and beer but in no way unusual except for its spectacularly unusual name. Fierce debate rages about where it came from. The most attractive solution (to me) is that it represents a gallows. Inquests used to be held in pubs (see Dickens' novel "Bleak House"), surely they could have hosted hangings as well? All part of the rich tapestry of life in Merrie England. Unfortunately it seems unlikely. More humdrum solutions relate to the configuration of local roads, or to a signal board giving the differing depths of water in the local ford over the River Lea. More amusing is the suggestion that the credit goes to an artist called John Frederick Herring whose early sign showed a coachman extending a long arm to the publican who holds back a glass of ale with a short arm, the message being: "Pay before you drink". But the truth is that no-one really knows where the name came from.
The Long Arm and Short Arm may have had a mysterious name but it was pretty clearly something of a dump in olden times. It was a simple beer shop, the lowest form of pub life, till 1928 when it was one of several pubs in the area which had a licence refused. McMullens had the existing building knocked down and put up the larger building which is still there now.
Friday, 1 July 2011
Pub Odyssey 22
Thursday 2 June: BELMONT, BURNHAM GREEN (Malcolm Allen, Mike Horsman, Andrew Swift)
COMMENT: This was half a visit to what is halfway to being a pub. We had called off this week's original destination, the Cowper Arms at Letty Green, because there wasn't a quorum but Andrew, Malcolm and myself got shot of prior commitments early enough to go to the Belmont for lunch. It's an oddity. In the middle of the Hertfordshire countryside it is essentially a French-style wine bar. It does serve perfectly respectable beer and the food was good, but to me it felt peculiar. I like pubs and this wasn't really a pub. However, any establishment which serves the right kind of beer deserves support and if there is a market for their approach, good luck to them.
Probably it felt odder because most Odyssey participants will remember when it was the Duck, an old fashioned boozer originally built in the 1840s to provide drink for the navvies who built the Digswell Viaduct (a brickfield for the viaduct was set up at Burnham Green). When I knew it, in the 1990s, it was less basic but definitely a community pub in which some Odyssians had many legendary evenings with the then landlord, Mick Bruce. Not for me to tell the stories!
COMMENT: This was half a visit to what is halfway to being a pub. We had called off this week's original destination, the Cowper Arms at Letty Green, because there wasn't a quorum but Andrew, Malcolm and myself got shot of prior commitments early enough to go to the Belmont for lunch. It's an oddity. In the middle of the Hertfordshire countryside it is essentially a French-style wine bar. It does serve perfectly respectable beer and the food was good, but to me it felt peculiar. I like pubs and this wasn't really a pub. However, any establishment which serves the right kind of beer deserves support and if there is a market for their approach, good luck to them.
Probably it felt odder because most Odyssey participants will remember when it was the Duck, an old fashioned boozer originally built in the 1840s to provide drink for the navvies who built the Digswell Viaduct (a brickfield for the viaduct was set up at Burnham Green). When I knew it, in the 1990s, it was less basic but definitely a community pub in which some Odyssians had many legendary evenings with the then landlord, Mick Bruce. Not for me to tell the stories!
Thursday, 2 June 2011
Pub Odyssey 19,20, 21
Thursday 12 May: ROBIN HOOD AND LITTLE JOHN, RABLEY HEATH (Malcolm Allen, Chris Haden, Mike Horsman, Elvis Pile, Andrew Swift)
COMMENT: I've been slow to update the blog because the site has had technical problems, also I have been sunning myself in a beautiful Landmark Trust villa in Northern Italy built in the 1540s by the great architect Andrea Palladio but which lacked internet access. Even Palladio couldn't think of everything. So by the time I'm writing this the Robin Hood and Little John is a bit of a distant memory. However, distance does not fade the memory of Keeley, the fascinating (and very nice) barmaid at the RHLJ who those present were still remembering in the Woolpack a fortnight later. I doubt if Keeley is remembering us! Too old and too boring!
The RHLJ is a name which suggests great antiquity, conjuring up images of medieval men in tights running round Sherwood Forest, or at least of Errol Flynn, but it isn't necessarily so. There are apparently over 100 pubs of this name but many were created in the nineteenth century when sentimental nostalgia for the middle ages was as its height. However, this particular RHLJ is older; it was certainly in existence on 3 August 1801 when John Carrington, amongst other functions the Chief Constable of Hertfordshire, entertained his constables there. Admittedly the Chief Constable was a less grand function then than now, but if such an event happened in 2011 the taxpayer would probably foot the bill; in 1801 it appears Carrington paid for it himself. Progress isn't always a good thing.
The penalties of progress were also shown all too clearly by a framed newspaper cutting on the wall about John Derry, a local resident and RHLJ regular who on 6 September 1948 was the first man to fly faster than sound but who four years later was killed, along with 27 other people, when his plane crashed at the Farnborough Air Show.
Monday, May 16: RED LION, Digswell Hill (Chris Haden, Elvis Pile, Andrew Swift)
COMMENT: I missed this one, being in Italy, so not much to say. This Red Lion seems to have got lost in the crowd of all the other Red Lions (there were around forty of them in Hertfordshire in the nineteenth century!) It's obviously an old coaching inn on the Great North Road as are a remarkable number of the surviving pubs in our part of East Herts, but apart from that not much information.
Friday May 27: WOOLPACK, Hertford (Malcolm Allen, Chris Haden, Mike Horsman, Elvis Pile, Andrew Swift, John Westwood).
COMMENT: Signs of modern life at the Woolpack, an old Hertford pub which is on the site of the second brewery opened by McMullens (in 1832). The pub television screens were showing the test match and the conversation was about solar panels! Food was good standard pub grub and the solar panels must have been fascinating, we stayed there longer than any pub so far.
The Woolpack is a good name for a pub in an agricultural county (in the nineteenth century Hertfordshire ranked as one of the five or six leading agricultural counties in England). A woolpack is a large bale of wool prepared for carriage or sale. It's said to have weighed 240lbs. Hertford in the nineteenth century had an important regular agricultural market and I imagine the Woolpack, like other pubs in Hertford, played an important role for thirsty and hungry buyers and sellers on market day.
COMMENT: I've been slow to update the blog because the site has had technical problems, also I have been sunning myself in a beautiful Landmark Trust villa in Northern Italy built in the 1540s by the great architect Andrea Palladio but which lacked internet access. Even Palladio couldn't think of everything. So by the time I'm writing this the Robin Hood and Little John is a bit of a distant memory. However, distance does not fade the memory of Keeley, the fascinating (and very nice) barmaid at the RHLJ who those present were still remembering in the Woolpack a fortnight later. I doubt if Keeley is remembering us! Too old and too boring!
The RHLJ is a name which suggests great antiquity, conjuring up images of medieval men in tights running round Sherwood Forest, or at least of Errol Flynn, but it isn't necessarily so. There are apparently over 100 pubs of this name but many were created in the nineteenth century when sentimental nostalgia for the middle ages was as its height. However, this particular RHLJ is older; it was certainly in existence on 3 August 1801 when John Carrington, amongst other functions the Chief Constable of Hertfordshire, entertained his constables there. Admittedly the Chief Constable was a less grand function then than now, but if such an event happened in 2011 the taxpayer would probably foot the bill; in 1801 it appears Carrington paid for it himself. Progress isn't always a good thing.
The penalties of progress were also shown all too clearly by a framed newspaper cutting on the wall about John Derry, a local resident and RHLJ regular who on 6 September 1948 was the first man to fly faster than sound but who four years later was killed, along with 27 other people, when his plane crashed at the Farnborough Air Show.
Monday, May 16: RED LION, Digswell Hill (Chris Haden, Elvis Pile, Andrew Swift)
COMMENT: I missed this one, being in Italy, so not much to say. This Red Lion seems to have got lost in the crowd of all the other Red Lions (there were around forty of them in Hertfordshire in the nineteenth century!) It's obviously an old coaching inn on the Great North Road as are a remarkable number of the surviving pubs in our part of East Herts, but apart from that not much information.
Friday May 27: WOOLPACK, Hertford (Malcolm Allen, Chris Haden, Mike Horsman, Elvis Pile, Andrew Swift, John Westwood).
COMMENT: Signs of modern life at the Woolpack, an old Hertford pub which is on the site of the second brewery opened by McMullens (in 1832). The pub television screens were showing the test match and the conversation was about solar panels! Food was good standard pub grub and the solar panels must have been fascinating, we stayed there longer than any pub so far.
The Woolpack is a good name for a pub in an agricultural county (in the nineteenth century Hertfordshire ranked as one of the five or six leading agricultural counties in England). A woolpack is a large bale of wool prepared for carriage or sale. It's said to have weighed 240lbs. Hertford in the nineteenth century had an important regular agricultural market and I imagine the Woolpack, like other pubs in Hertford, played an important role for thirsty and hungry buyers and sellers on market day.
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