by Albert Jack
As a part of the new regulations, Edward demanded that that woolpacks, previously random in size, were made uniform, at around 240 pounds each in weight. This became the standard. The Great Custom, in turn, became the cornerstone of the English tax system, in the first instance helping to raise money to fund the Hundred Years’ War (see also THE AGINCOURT and JACK STRAW’S CASTLE). Other forms of taxation and regulation were introduced over the years, while the smuggling of sheep or wool out of the country (known as ‘owling’ because it was carried out at night) attracted severe punishment. Anyone caught smuggling would have his left hand cut off, the hand then being nailed in a public place to act as a deterrent to any other would-be offenders.
Such was the importance of the wool industry that from the fourteenth century the presiding officer of the House of Lords (formerly the Lord Chancellor, since 2006 the Lord Speaker) has sat upon a large red seat stuffed with wool. Known as the Woolsack, this serves as a symbolic reminder of how it was wealth from the wool trade that funded, and helped found, our once great nation.
There are Woolpack hotels, inns and taverns scattered all over England, but the most famous of all is a fictional one: the pub in a British soap opera that has been running since 1972, Emmerdale. The village of Esholt in west Yorkshire was used as a set to film the programme between 1976 and 1998. For the purpose of the series, the village pub changed its name from the Commercial Inn to the Woolpack, becoming a major tourist attraction in the process.
The World’s End
A CITY BOUNDARY OR A SIXTEENTH-CENTURY PROPHECY?
The popularity of the World’s End as a pub name is likely to lie in the fact that it makes such a great response to someone asking where to go for a drink; ‘Let’s go to The World’s End’. (That’s how far you’d go when you really need a drink.)
The phrase may indicate the end of the world in a geographical sense. And this would appear to apply in the case of the World’s End in Edinburgh. The pub is situated where part of the city wall once ran, marking the end of the rest of the world and the beginning of the Scottish capital (the main gate or entrance to the city was located nearby). The other sense of the phrase is, of course, the ending of our planet, as predicted with disturbing regularity by prophets and soothsayers down the ages.
One of the most famous of such doom-mongers – and one commemorated in many a pub name – may be traced to the unlikely spot of Knaresborough, in Yorkshire, previously best known as the place where the murderers of Thomas à Becket fled after killing him in 1170. It is here that Ursula Southeil (c.1488–1561) was born. Better known as Mother Shipton, she is the prophetess responsible for many startlingly accurate predictions that put Nostradamus firmly in the league of ‘having a bit of a stab at it’.
Among the events that she predicted are the Great Plague of London and the Great Fire – Samuel Pepys even refers to her in his diary. She also predicted the English Civil War and warned of the threat from the Spanish and their Armada (see THE GOLDEN HIND and THE LORD HOWARD), and she publicly declared that Cardinal Wolsey, Archbishop of York, would never actually enter the town. Legend has it that Henry VIII’s right-hand man then vowed to ‘have the witch burned’ when he finally arrived in York, and was actually on his way there in 1530 when he was ordered back to London to be tried for treason.
Legend also has it that Ursula Southeil was born in a cave near the River Nidd and that the Devil was her father. She was born terribly deformed and smelling of sulphur, and a mighty crack of thunder shook the town at her birth. Which sounds suspiciously like a story put about by the real father, Lord Somebody-or-other or Baron Nothing-to-do-with-me-your-honour. At the age of twenty-four she apparently married a carpenter called Toby Shipton, although they had no children, which is perhaps not surprising as Mother Shipton has been described as hideously ugly with a hunched back, large hooked nose, facial hair and missing teeth.
Since the 1640s, many books have been written about her, each one lauding her achievements with the benefit of hindsight. She apparently prophesied Henry VIII’s victory over the French at the Battle of the Spurs in 1513 and the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536–41. Published after her death was a series of poems predicting many, at that time, unimaginable events such as man in flight; ships made of iron and steel; carriages without a horse; gold in an as yet unknown land; England and France fighting as one; and messages sent through the air in an instant. She also predicted the eventual destruction of mankind and subsequent ending of the world. However, she made the mistake of putting a date on this, one that terrified the Victorians but which we should find rather less scary:
The world to an end shall come
In eighteen hundred and eighty-one.
Hence the popularity of the name since then: the only World’s End any of us is likely to encounter is a pub. I’ll drink to that.
Pubs Named in Honour of Famous Racehorses
The links between alcohol and racing are well known. But something that has surprised me in my research is just how many pubs there are named after racehorses. And it’s not simply grateful owners and gamblers who become publicans; it turns out that quite a few jockeys retire to run pubs, funded in many cases by their winnings from riding a particular horse. This may also explain why so many pub landlords are built along Napoleonic lines. Small they may be, but, like elephants, jockeys have long memories, and many have named their pub after the horse that got them there. Here are ten of my favourites. (There are many more, of course.)
The Altisidora
(Bishop Burton, North Humberside)
This rural pub on the road between Hull and York is named after a three-year-old chestnut filly that won the St Leger in 1814. Legend recalls how the local squire staked his entire fortune on the horse and then renamed the village inn after his famous victory. If that is true, then his bank manager and heart specialist probably also erected statues in honour of the horse and we can only imagine how his wife must have reacted. The spirited racehorse was almost certainly named after the Lady Altisidora who teases Don Quixote so unmercifully in Cervantes’s famous novel.
The Arkle Manor
(Betchworth, Surrey)
This traditional country pub was renamed in 1970 after an Irish thoroughbred who became a byword for extreme speed in the mid 1960s. Arkle beat the previously unstoppable Mill Reef in 1964 to win the first of three consecutive Cheltenham Gold Cups by over twenty lengths, capturing the hearts of the nation in the process. When this was followed by a couple of Hennessy Gold Cups, a King George VI Chase and an entire year of unbeaten runs, the horse became a sporting legend. The racing authorities even took the unprecedented step of devising two weight systems in the Irish Grand National – one to be used when Arkle was running and one when he wasn’t. Arkle won the 1964 race by only one length but he was carrying two and half stone more than his rivals. Calls of ‘Arkle for President’ only strengthened his fame and he was simply known as ‘Himself’. Fan mail from all over the world addressed to ‘Himself, Ireland’ would usually reach his stables. The Irish joked that drinking Guinness twice a day was the source of his strength. So there should be no doubts about the beer of choice at any pub named after him.
The Blue Peter
(Peterborough, Cambridgeshire)
A Blue Peter is a blue flag with a white square in the centre traditionally raised by a ship to signal that it is preparing to set sail. Introduced in 1750 and originally consisting of a blue flag with six white balls raised, it soon became part of the international code of signals as the signal for ‘P’. In the old phonetic alphabet ‘Peter’ was the word for the letter ‘P’, replaced in today’s alphabet by the word ‘Papa’. The popular children’s programme, first broadcast in 1958, was so named because it intended to ‘set sail on a voyage of discovery with its young viewers’. Many pubs, especially those on the coast, are named after the naval signal, but at least one takes its name from a racehorse that won the Derby in 1939. Blue Peter was one of the finest Derby winners of all
time and, had the outbreak of the Second World War not meant all the key races were cancelled, could have gone on to win the Triple Crown (the Derby, the 2,000 Guineas Stakes and the St Leger).
The Brigadier Gerard
(Eastleigh, Hampshire, and York)
Winning eighteen out of nineteen races between 1970 and 1972, Brigadier Gerard became one of the world’s most popular racehorses – especially among the sort of people who invest the housekeeping money with their bookmakers. The Brigadier Gerard Stakes at Sandown is named in his honour, as are these two pubs.
The horse was named after Brigadier Etienne Gerard, a fictional hussar in the French army during the Napoleonic Wars (see THE PRINCE BLUCHER for a real-life hussar from that time), the hero of a series of short comic stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Bored with his omniscient creation Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle enjoyed creating the complete antithesis to the famous detective: a hero with very little sense who bravely blunders through the events of world history. Confidently believing himself to be the world’s greatest lover, swordsman, soldier and gentleman, Brigadier Gerard has all kinds of ridiculous adventures generally on horseback, due, all too often, to a very French misunderstanding of the English and their customs. One well-known story has him joining a hunt with the English army; when he catches up with the fox he kills it with his sabre, much to the horror (and barely suppressed amusement) of the English officers.
The Dr Syntax Inn
(New Ridley and Prudhoe, Northumberland)
Dr Syntax was the hero of a series of highly popular cartoons by the English caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827). The Tour of Dr Syntax in Search of the Picturesque (1813), The Second Tour of Dr Syntax in Search of Consolation (1820) and The Third Tour of Dr Syntax in Search of a Wife (1821) proved to be so popular with the public that a Newcastle racehorse was named after him. The horse went on to win the Derby in 1820, inspiring the name of two Northumberland pubs in the process. Syntax, in case you’re wondering, is, as some writers will be able to tell you, the correct arrangement of words in a sentence – or the art of structuring sentences properly. For example, ‘The old grey racehorse that won the Derby’ is good syntax; ‘The grey old racing horse who lost’ is not.
The Eclipse
Just as most inns called THE BLUE PETER are named after the naval flag, so most Eclipse pubs are named after the moment when the sun is covered by the moon and the sky turns black. However, a few are named in honour of a champion racehorse born during the eclipse of the sun in 1764. Eclipse was undefeated during his entire career and, legend has it, without ever being spurred on or whipped. The expression ‘Eclipse first and the rest nowhere’, popular at the time, is said to have its origins in the phrase commonly uttered by the horse’s owner, Captain Dennis O’Kelly, when placing bets for a race. The Eclipse Stakes (UK and Canada), Prix Eclipse (France) and the Eclipse Award (America) are races all named in honour of the famous stallion.
The Flying Childers
(Matlock, Derbyshire)
Born in 1714 and a direct descendant of one of the three Arabian stallions that fathered the modern thoroughbred bloodline, the Flying Childers is often described as the first truly great racehorse. Named after his trainer, Colonel Leonard Childers, the horse was also often called the Devonshire Childers in deference to his owner, the Duke of Devonshire. The horse won only a few major races, but at such a canter the duke retired him to stud. This was despite receiving an offer of the horse’s weight in gold from a rival owner, such was the value placed on Childers. The stallion then went on to sire many other champion racehorses, no doubt earning the wily duke several times the animal’s weight in gold in the end. However, it’s hardly surprising that the version of the horse’s name chosen for a pub concentrates on his speed and grace rather than the business acumen of his owner.
The Flying Fox
(Colchester, Essex)
Neither a tropical fish nor a fruit bat (although it could be either of these), this Flying Fox is another famous racehorse, the Triple Crown champion of 1899. Owned by the 1st Duke of Westminster, Flying Fox was a notoriously volatile creature and very difficult to handle. He was retired to stud after becoming only the eighth horse in history to win the prestigious Triple Crown during an undefeated season. Following the duke’s death that same year, he was sold at auction, purchased for a record 37,500 guineas (£35,714). Exported to France by his new owner, he sired many other champions and first-class winners before his death in 1911. His skeleton is on display in the museum at the Château de Saumur and there is a memorial of him at Eaton Stud in Cheshire.
The Little Wonder
Little Wonder made horse-racing history in 1840 by winning the Derby at underdog odds of fifty to one. Besides inspiring pubs to be named in his honour, the horse also lent his name to another sporting legend. Bare-knuckle boxer and racing enthusiast Thomas Sayers (1826–65) adopted the nickname during his eleven-year fighting career between 1849 and 1860. Boxing was as popular as racing but completely unregulated and very violent: matches went on until one assailant was knocked unconscious, which could take several hours. Consequently, it was illegal and the fights had to be held clandestinely: Sayers’s first proper fight was fought barefoot at night on Wandsworth Common so that he could escape more easily through the mud if the police arrived.
No taller than a jockey, standing at only five foot eight inches in his bare feet and weighing under eleven stone, Sayers was also known as the Napoleon of the Prize Ring. In 1857 he became the first boxer to be declared World Heavyweight Champion when he knocked out the Tipton Slasher (William Perry). Sayers’s last fight, in 1860 in America, was the first international boxing match fought by an Englishman. After thirty-seven damaging, bare-knuckle rounds against John C. Heenan, his American opponent, Little Wonder began to tire and his supporters invaded the ring, prompting the police to follow suit, and several arrests were made. An exhausted Sayers was persuaded to retire (a public subscription of £3,000 was collected for him, a huge sum of money in those days but reflecting his great popularity) and he spent the last five years of his life frittering away his pension in the pubs and taverns of London. He became a familiar figure on the streets of the capital, always accompanied by his enormous dog, Lion. When he died, aged just thirty-nine, 10,000 people attended his funeral. He is buried in Highgate Cemetery, with a statue of Lion lying across his tomb.
The Seabiscuit Inn
(Wells, New York)
Seabiscuit was the champion thoroughbred that in 1936 became a symbol of hope to an American people knocked sideways by the Great Depression. Appropriately for those lean economic times, the names of both Seabiscuit and his sire, Hard Tack, are derived from naval expressions to describe a seaman’s unappetizing daily ‘bread’ ration while on board ship. Seabiscuit lost many times before he found his winning streak, and his pluck, stamina and trick of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat proved inspirational. The subject of a bestselling book (2001) and a film nominated for an Oscar in 2003, Sea-biscuit has become the most famous American racehorse of all time.
Further Reading
As I said in the introduction my only regret is that there are so many pub names and stories I haven’t had the space to write about. Here are some entertaining books (only one of them written by me) that will tell you more:
The Local: the History of the English Pub by Paul Jennings (2007)
The Wordsworth Dictionary of Pub Names
Licensed to Sell: The History and Heritage of the Public House by Geoffrey K. Brandwood (2004)
About the history of beer:
Man walks into a pub: a sociable history of beer by Pete Brown (2004)
About local legends and popular history:
The Lore of the Land: A Guide to England’s Legends by Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson (2005)
London Lore by Steve Roud (2008)
Pop Goes the Weasel: The Secret Meanings of Nursery Rhymes by Albert Jack (2008)
And about the pub’s in
fluence on sport:
Can We Have Our Balls Back Please: How the British invented sport and then (almost) forgot how to play by Julian Norridge (2008)
Index
(Bold indicates principal entry)
Abbo of Fleury 65
Accrington 237
Accrington Observer 237
Act of Settlement 93
Act of Union 33
Addison, Joseph 1–2
Addison Arms, the 1–2
Admiral Collingwood, the xx, 3–5
Admiral Duncan, the 5–7
Admiral’s Men 137
Admiral Vernon, the 7–10
Agincourt (town) 13–14
Agincourt, Battle of 12–13, 81, 98
Agincourt, the 10–14
Albert (consort of Queen Victoria), Prince 143
Albion (ancient name for Britain) 14–15, 31
