WRITER
Pubs and and pints… beer, wine and spirits
The title says it all! Pubs are are a fundamental part of British life, there are no places like them anywhere else in the word; pubs may be owned by companies or individuals, run by landlords or managers, but they belong to the community. There is a well-known story of a vicar preaching against the evils of drink who dropped a worm into a glass of water and another into a glass of beer. At the end of his sermon the worm in the beer had died and he asked what the congregation learned from this. A voice from the back came clearly: “If you don’t want worms, drink beer.”
The Old Sun Inn
The Old Sun Inn in Saffron Walden is over seven hundred years old! Apparently Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn both stayed here… not at the same time, obviously! Oliver Cromwell is reputed to have stayed here too during the Civil War; he was born in Huntingdon, which isn’t too far away, about thirty miles. Like many old buildings […]
MoreRevisiting the Scales Hotel
I wrote about the Portland Arms, the pub in Cambridge that my grandfather Reuben Elsden once held the license, and I was reminded of a post I wrote some time ago. Here it is: From the Scales Hotel to the Portland Arms was no distance at all because they were one and the same! The […]
MorePubs my dad might have known
My dad was brought up in Cambridge and from the age of four until he left home to get married he lived in a pub with his parents and brothers and sisters. The pub was the Portland Arms, and in a previous life it had been The Scales Hotel, named after the brewing family. I’ve […]
MoreThe Green Lion
Following on from my post about pub names, seeing this lichen-clad lion, I thought the Green Lion would be a great name for a pub… I can only find one listed, in Rainham in Essex, and another one in Malmö in Sweden… … and here is a link to it: http://www.greenlion.se/
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