The Brazen George

I’ve been looking back at the names of old pubs in Cambridge, many of them gone, long gone, and maybe some of them renamed as is the trend these days – names which have nothing to do with anything. It used to be that you could direct a stranger by the pubs in a place, now there are so many which are gone, and so many changed names to things like the Spoon and Follicle, the Warped Damson, the Jelly Mold… actually I have made those up, but there are some ludicrous modern pub names.

Cambridge before the war was not much bigger than a market town, even though it was a University city, and many pub names reflected the rural shire… the names of farm animals and occupations for example.

There were also many, many pubs called after famous personalities of the day, royalty and the aristocracy, and also the English patron saint, St George. There was one pub called the Brazen George, its sign showed a brass coloured George slaying the dragon; it was a going concern in 1500, so goodness knows how old it actually was. Like so many, it is long gone, and was long gone when my dad was a boy.

Here is just a sample of pubs named after people – either actual people of by their trades and occupations… and the mythological Green Man of course!