by Albert Jack
A mighty bowl on deck he drew
And filled it to the brink;
Such drank the Burford’s gallant crew
And such the gods shall drink.
The sacred robe which Vernon wore
Was drenched within the same;
And hence his virtues guard our shore,
And Grog derives its name.
The unhappy sailors of the fleet soon began calling the watered-down ration ‘grog’ and as an extension of that drunken sailors were labelled ‘groggy’.
In 1746 Old Grog retired from active service and spent the rest of his days concentrating on politics and naval affairs. His lasting monuments remain Mount Vernon, home of America’s first president, Portobello Road in London and his name on many English pubs that will do their level best to help you feel ‘groggy’ the next morning.
The Agincourt
ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH, DEAR FRIENDS
In 1414 a generation of English and Frenchmen had taken a twenty-six-year break from slaughtering each other. They were already seventy-seven years into the Hundred Years’ War (although the Hundred and Sixteen Years’ War would be a more accurate name), which could have been a few decades shorter had the young English king, Henry V, not turned down the French invitation to resolve their territorial differences. Claiming Charles VI’s offer of settlement was insulting, Henry gathered his troops together and in August 1415 landed his army on the Normandy coastline, intending to head for Paris.
But a rethink was needed after his siege of the port of Harfleur took six weeks, far longer than expected. By the time the town had surrendered, on 22 September, autumn was closing in and the season for mindless violence was all but over, so Henry started back towards Calais, at that time an English stronghold, to regroup and re-arm for the following spring.
The Siege of Harfleur had given the French time to react, however, and troops were already marching north to confront the English at the Somme, in northern France, an area made famous many centuries later as the scene of far greater slaughter, during the First World War (see THE LORD KITCHENER). After a three-week march of over 260 miles the English army was weak, ill and hoping to reach the safety of Calais instead of being drawn into a pitched battle. With an army of under 9,000, its numbers depleted by disease and desertion, Henry had no intention of attacking the French. But he was forced into action when, on 24 October, enemy troops caught up with and trapped his men on a narrow strip of land in a forest between Agincourt and Tramecourt.
Things looked pretty bad for the English. Early the following day Henry addressed his men, pointing out to them that each and every one was in a fight for his life, as prisoners were unlikely to be taken. The French, by contrast, greater in number and occupying a better battle position, were confident of a quick victory, believing they could wipe out the English threat and head home before winter set in.
But the English had one trick up their sleeve: the long-bow. Equivalent in length to the height of the individual archer, the bow had already proved its worth at the Battle of Crécy in 1346 (see THE STAR AND GARTER). Henry knew that, used en masse, the weapon could be deployed at a long range, devastating an entire army from two hundred yards away, while the archers remained at a relatively safe distance from the enemy. The king therefore deployed 5,000 longbowmen at his flanks, the vast majority of his army, who dug in behind rows of sharpened pikes. They were protected from the cavalry charge of the French knights by the thick forest on either side.
Once his bowmen were ready, Henry ordered the initial attack on the French army, who must have been surprised to find themselves on the receiving end of ten arrows per archer per minute. Within ten minutes of the first volley, half a million arrows had shattered the French lines, causing mayhem and panic. French knights charged the archers only to find themselves caught between the spiked defences and more horsemen coming up behind. Trapped directly in front of the archers and weighed down by their heavy armour, they were scythed down within minutes and the English foot soldiers, wielding swords and hatchets, then moved in to finish them off.
When the archers ran out of arrows, they dropped their bows and waded into the fray with axes, and soon up to 10,000 Frenchmen lay dead, against English losses of only 1,600, although some historians claim that was the overall number of the wounded and only 100 Englishmen actually lost their lives. Either way, Agincourt was a major victory for the English and a disaster for the French as most of their knights and military leaders were killed, severely restricting French military capability for a generation to follow.
Agincourt is celebrated in pub names throughout Britain and in Shakespeare’s rousing play Henry V. The Laurence Olivier film that came out in 1944 was key to raising British morale in the darkest days of the Second World War. But the really interesting thing is the way the French remember it…
For a town with such a huge and historic reputation, Agincourt – or Azincourt, as the French call it – is a remarkably nondescript little place with a population of just under 300. Even so, the French hold an annual festival there, including re-enactments of the battle, to commemorate their crushing defeat by the English longbowmen. What a strange thing to do! If the French were to hold a festival to commemorate every important battle they have lost, then there would be one every day of the year.
The Albion
THERE’LL BE SYRIAN PRINCESSES OVER THE WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER
Albion is an ancient and romantic name for Britain that some believe evolved from the Latin word albus (meaning ‘white’) in reference to the famous cliffs at Dover and Seaford that greet the traveller from mainland Europe, providing his first view of the country. Ancient Britain was occupied by a series of tribes who all had different names for the areas that they lived in; it was the traders and the potential invaders who needed to name the whole place, generally basing what they called it on the small amount of knowledge they had of the country. White cliffs apart, it is equally possible that the name Albion for the British Isles could have arisen from ‘Albany’ – derived from the Gaelic word ‘Alba’ – the ancient name for the northern part of Scotland, later renamed Caledonia by the Romans (see THE BRITANNIA).
The name found on many a pub sign throughout Britain could derive from another source, however – classical mythology. Albion, the giant son of Neptune, the Roman god of the sea, is said to have discovered the islands and ruled over them for forty-four years. But according to another legend, ‘Albion’ has more female connotations. The fifty daughters of the King of Syria all married on the same day and marked the occasion by murdering their husbands on the communal wedding night. As punishment they were all set adrift in a ship and finally ran ashore on the coast of what is now known as Britain. Here they established a colony and each daughter, the eldest of whom was called Albia, married local natives and formed their own community of Albions, never to return to their homeland.
In 1579 Sir Francis Drake, the great Elizabethan explorer (see THE GOLDEN HIND), annexed an area of land now known as California during his circumnavigation of the globe and claimed it for the Virgin Queen. He marked this discovery with a brass plaque naming the territory New Albion and this plate, it is recorded, eventually turned up somewhere near San Francisco in 1937, but by then Old Albion had seen what the settlers were doing to the place and decided they didn’t want it after all.
The Alma
THE WAR TO NAME ALL PUBS
There are many inns around Britain bearing this name, or a variation of it. The Battle of Alma, Heroes of Alma, Heights of Alma and the Alma Arms are just a few examples. The Alma is the name of the major river running through the area of the Ukraine formerly known as the Crimea. On 20 September 1854 it became the scene of the first key battle of the Crimean War, fought by the British and her European allies against the Russians over lands once occupied by the declining Ottoman Empire.
The result was a stunning, if unexpected, victory for Britain and France during one of the few periods of history when the two c
ountries were actually on the same side and not fighting each other. This triumph was marked all over Britain with references to the Alma, and hundreds of returning soldiers called their newborn daughters Alma out of respect for their fallen comrades, leading to a Ukrainian river becoming one of the most popular girls’ names of the late nineteenth century.
The Battle of Alma led directly to the Russian counter-offensive a month later at Balaclava, which became famous for the ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade, led by Lord Cardigan under the command of Lieutenant General George Charles Bingham (1800–88), otherwise known as the 3rd Earl of Lucan. He was the less-than-illustrious ancestor of the rather more notorious Richard John Bingham (1934–?), 7th Earl of Lucan, missing since 1974 and still wanted by the police. (If you could check the quieter corners of your local pub for him – he’d be getting on a bit now, of course – they’d be most grateful.)
Like the knitted headcovering with holes for eyes, nose and mouth (it was bitterly cold in the Crimean Peninsular) so favoured by today’s bankrobbers, pubs in Britain were named the Balaclava in honour of the men who fought there, and the 350 British soldiers who lost their lives on that day. It was the disaster at Balaclava, caused by the incompetence of the commanding officers, that led the British army to review the practice of selling commissions to wealthy noblemen, enabling them to buy any rank they could afford and, without any special training, lead soldiers into battle. This led to the Cardwell Reforms, established between 1868 and 1874, that also banned flogging and branding as a form of punishment in both the army and the navy.
Aldershot, for many years the home of the British army, also has a pub in honour of the campaign. It is called, quite simply, the Crimea, and locals even go to the lengths of re-enacting, with convincing realism, some of the more violent scenes of the historic conflict every weekend. At least that’s what it looked like to me when I drove past there the other night.
The Anchor
WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE THIRSTY SAILOR?
There are two main theories why the anchor is such a popular symbol for a pub. The principal, and most likely, reason why the name or image adorns alehouses and taverns across the land (see THE HOPE AND ANCHOR for the other one) is based on the notion that sailors are legendary drinkers, famous for spending several months’ wages on one night out. The pubs of the port towns or city docks would display an anchor outside their premises to attract sailors, in the hope that, after setting foot on land for the first time in months, maybe even years, they would be thirsty for ale and put away as much as they could. And, needless to say, that’s what many of them did.
Variations on the theme, such as the Anchor and Horsehoes, are more likely to have been a combination of two names after a business had changed hands. Other examples include the Royal Anchor, if a member of the royal family had ever paid a visit, the Crown and Anchor, if that had been a ruling monarch, or the Golden Anchor. Meanwhile, some inland examples of the Anchor are thought to have non-nautical origins, such as the ‘anchor man’ in a local tug-of-war team or the anchors used to hold down hot air balloons before and after take-off.
My favourite Anchor can be found in an area of Bristol known as the ‘Made Forever’. The story goes that two local miners, Lewis and Fudge, discovered a huge seam of coal and exclaimed: ‘That’s it, we are made for ever!’ The blacksmith’s forge opposite the pub was famous for making ships’ anchors and hence the pub became known as the Anchor Made Forever.
The Aunt Sally
FORGET WORZEL GUMMIDGE…
Originally a pub or fairground game of throwing something at a target, the phrase became used metaphorically to mean something or someone set up as a target for criticism. Much like myself.
In fairgrounds and pubs across the land, Aunt Sally was something to be set up simply in order to be knocked down again, proving conclusively that the British press were not the first to think up the idea. Aunt Sally consisted originally of the moulded head of a lady sporting a clay pipe in her mouth, which evolved over the years into a ball on a stake, similar to the coconut shies of more recent times. The idea was for participants to knock the pipe from the lady’s mouth, in a rather more benign reinvention of the ‘sport’ it derived from (animal lovers should look away now) in which a cock was tied to a post and weighted sticks were thrown at the poor bird until somebody killed it. The winner took it home to cook. (The squeamish among you can look again.)
Aunt Sally is still played in pubs, often bearing the same name and sited mainly in London and the home counties of Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire. Here the game consists of a ball placed on a wooden plinth. After a few drinks, locals amuse themselves by throwing sticks at the ball to try and knock it off without hitting the plinth. I have been in many pubs where locals amuse themselves after a few beers by throwing anything they can get their hands on (and it can be inspirational – see J. D. WETHERSPOON). I have never heard it called Aunt Sally before, so I am planning a trip to Oxfordshire to find out a little more…
The Bag of Nails
THE ULTIMATE IN DIY ACCOMMODATION OR DRUNKEN REVELS WITH A GOD?
Some people have argued that this pub name comes from a hoary old joke where a man walks into a pub and asks for a room. The sign says that it’s one shilling for the night or sixpence if you make your own bed. When the man chooses to make his own bed, the landlord gives him some wood and a bag of nails…
The Bag of Nails sounds a very utilitarian name for a pub but a fascinating theory about its origins comes all the way from classical mythology. The name (try saying it fast a couple of times) could well be a corruption of bacchanals, which were the celebrations of the Roman god of wine. Bacchus wasn’t just the god of wine, however, he was also the god of ritual madness – and his rites were characterized by maniacal dancing to the sound of loud music, in which his followers, who were mostly female, whirled around, screamed, became drunk and incited one another to greater and greater ecstasy. The goal was to achieve a state of enthusiasm in which their souls were temporarily freed from their earthly bodies and able to commune with Bacchus. The rite climaxed in a performance of frenzied feats of strength and madness, such as uprooting trees, tearing a bull (the god’s symbol) apart with their bare hands and eating its flesh raw. Some of you may be now be nodding your heads, realizing there must be rather more going on than meets the eye on a Saturday night at the Bag of Nails.
Bacchus is easy to blame for high-spirited revelries that get out of hand and are best forgotten the next day.
However, this theory is strongly denied by the history of a specific pub, the Bag of Nails close to Buckingham Palace in London. The pub first opened in 1774 shortly after George III bought the Duke of Buckingham’s London home (not the duke celebrated in the eponymous pub name, but John Sheffield – see THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM). The story goes that the pub was converted from an ironmonger’s or blacksmith’s shop, the ‘Nails’ was thought to service the staff of King George and of his wife, Queen Charlotte. The pub name is thought to have evolved from the old ironmonger’s sign, which was traditionally a bag of nails. However, this might always be the pub’s owners deciding on an origin for their name that was boringly respectable rather than scandalous. Royal servants, whatever they might really get up to off duty, must be seen to be behaving politely.
The Bear and Ragged Staff
WATERING HOLE OF THE KINGMAKER?
Many pub signs have come about as a result of an inn-keeper showing loyalty to a local landowner. The fact that signs with very specific origins can be found in other parts of the country is simply due to migration – an innkeeper moving to another region, or indeed another part of the world, and reusing the name, for instance. The Bear and Ragged Staff, widespread throughout the country, is one such example. Originally, pubs bearing this sign, the heraldic emblem of the Earl of Warwick, would have appeared only in Warwickshire. The fact that it also crops up in other parts of the country is mostly likely because it makes a good name for a pub and a strik
ing image (the bear muzzled and chained to the staff) for a pub sign. However, there is an additional reason for its appearance outside the home county of William Shakespeare.
One of the characters in the history play Henry VI, Part Two is Richard Neville, the 16th Earl of Warwick (1428–71), otherwise known as the Kingmaker. In Act 5, Scene 1, Shakespeare has him say: ‘Now, by my father’s badge, old Neville’s crest, / The rampant bear chained to the ragged staff, / This day I will wear aloft my burgonet [helmet].’ According to the legend, the first Earl of Warwick killed a bear with his own hands and the second earl despatched another by using a branch torn from a tree (the ‘ragged staff’), which is why bears and staffs were included in their noble coat of arms. Reference to the ‘crest’ in Shakepeare’s play (also appearing as a prop on stage) would have made the emblem much more widely known. So it’s largely thanks to the Bard that the image is still in use five hundred years later. (For the Dog and Bear, see THE OLD DOG AND DUCK.)
The Belvedere
HOW THE POPE’S SUMMERHOUSE INSPIRED AN ENDURING FASHION
