Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Category: UK

  • King’s Lynn – Nip and Growler

    King’s Lynn – Nip and Growler

    This micropub, the first in King’s Lynn, opened in 2017 in what was formerly a Jessops camera shop, although in a previous incarnation this was the location of a pub, originally the Bull Inn. I know this the pub owners have taken the time and trouble to arrange for a comprehensive history of the building to be placed on their web-site at http://www.nipandgrowler.uk/. I like owners who are proud of their building and see it as part of the offering, and irritated at myself that it’s taken me two years to manage to come here.

    The pub specialises in local beers and ciders, which is a noble endeavour. But that hasn’t limited the quality or range of the selection, with the wonderfully friendly member of staff keenly telling me about the two dark options. This is one of the friendliest pubs that I’ve been in, there’s an atmosphere which just works well, something that is often lacking. Quirky, relaxed and comfortable. I like it.

    The interior of the pub, which makes it look quiet, but I took the photos during the brief gaps between customers. There’s some fun signage, but nothing forced like it’s come out of a modernisation organised by Craft Union, who seem to rip out atmosphere in pubs they ‘update’. There’s wi-fi and plugs, all sufficiently modern, but there are also board games for customers to amuse themselves with.

    The service was impeccable throughout my visit, little things like actually saying goodbye to customers is often overlooked by publicans and their staff and it’s not difficult when it’s clear someone is getting ready to leave. I have droned on to people about Hop and Vine in Hull, where the landlord has managed to create himself a marvellously welcoming atmosphere. There’s a different customer base here, but the atmosphere doesn’t lag far behind.

    Onto the beers, and I felt the need to try both of the dark beers.

    The Cocow from Ampersand Brewery near Bungay is a chocolate milk stout, which is very much my favourite kind of beer. This was beautiful, the flavours of bitter chocolate and a little bit of coffee in the mix, like some fine bar of dark chocolate. The flavours aren’t immediately obvious, they’re more of an aftertaste, but that works for me.

    The Father Grime is a stout from Brewboard, a brewery I hadn’t heard of, but they’re from Harston, near Cambridge. The promised biscuity flavour was there, quite a rich stout although without the strong and pleasant aftertastes that the Cocow had. But, still, very lovely.

    Overall, and this is just for my reference than because anyone else is interested, but this is certainly one of my pubs of the year. It’s also near enough for me to be able to visit again, which I most definitely will. What a delightful pub option though for the people of King’s Lynn, and I look forward to some micro-pub set-up opening in Swaffham to liven things up a bit.

  • Wisbech – Wheatsheaf Inn

    Wisbech – Wheatsheaf Inn

    The frontage of this building isn’t the most inspirational, but it houses a relatively large JD Wetherspoon outlet, probably the busiest pub in the town. The frontage used to have large advertising boards up, which I thought made the building look better than the new decoration of wheat sheafs, although I can’t deny that this is an appropriate image.

    The history of the building is told by Wetherspoons:

    “This pub comprises a former furniture and decorating store and the old Royal public house. Before 1869, The Royal was called The Wheatsheaf, recorded at this address since 1792.”

    CAMRA’s Whatpub tells an interesting story….Very cheery.

    “Murderers were once gibbeted on a close by common and it is said that the last man to be hanged in Wisbech ate his last meal in the pub. Said to be haunted.”

    Most of the stories I’ve found about this pub are sad, with the Huntingdon, Bedford & Peterborough Gazette reporting in August 1836 that the three-year old son of a poor man, working as a journeyman tailor, ran out into the road outside the pub and was killed after being hit by the shaft of a loaded waggon.

    The beer choice wasn’t fabulous, despite the pub offering seven different ales, with nothing particularly intriguing. I went for this, which was well kept and tasted fine. I couldn’t work out what tastes the beer had, likely because my palate isn’t quite sophisticated enough, but other reviewers tasted biscuit, breadcrust, berries, caramel and coffee. I got none of those, but the beer didn’t have an unpleasant or dull taste.

    The pub itself is largely open plan on a single floor, nothing inspirational, but perfectly functional.

    Reviews are broadly positive, although the recent poster on TripAdvisor didn’t seem to be a huge fan of the pub:

    “Vile. Absolutely disgusting, smackheads hitting up in toliets, feces all over walls staff not washing hands really would not recommend”

    There’s something about this which suggests to me that the reviewer wasn’t allowed in and decided to post angrily, but who knows….

    The review:

    “Food was cold staff rude all area place dirty tables asked for coke with no ice when it came with ice when I mentioned it she picked it out with her hands would avoid this place again”

    Isn’t great. I’m not sure the poorly presented response of “thank you for your comments” from the pub helps much either, it looks like someone from the pub has been responding on a phone as the other responses from management are littered with spelling and punctuation errors. My favourite are responses from Wetherspoon pub managers where the reply to grumpy customers is terse and passive aggressive, I have lots of respect for those.

    Anyway, I got distracted with being far too concerned about spelling mistakes from two years ago. It’s also hard to complain about a pub with a pint of beer which costs £2.09, and indeed, £1.59 with a CAMRA 50p off voucher.

  • Swaffham – Butter Market Cross

    Swaffham – Butter Market Cross

    The town’s market cross, erected for the Earl Orford between 1781 and 1783 (I’m not sure why it took two years, civil engineers and cups of tea again I suspect…) and designed by James Wyatt. On the top is Ceres, the Roman Goddess of agriculture (there’s a bookshop in the town called Ceres Bookshop as well).

  • Wisbech – Wisbech Library

    Wisbech – Wisbech Library

    Well, great news on the Pevsner front. Norfolk Library service couldn’t manage to supply me with a Pevsner for the Swaffham area in either their Swaffham or Dereham libraries (one was locked in an office in a library I couldn’t get in anyway, with the second one having been pinched), but Cambridgeshire Library service have managed to have it available in Wisbech. And, bonus points for an older Cambridgeshire edition and even more bonus points for having public wi-fi, which Norfolk don’t.

  • Swaffham – “I Doubt He’ll Find That in his Swaffham Indian”

    I was a little amused by this article about a cruise in Saga Magazine (don’t ask) about Swaffham. I suspect that the author might be right about Noel….

  • Swaffham – St. Peter and St. Paul Church (Elizabeth Hainesworth)

    Swaffham – St. Peter and St. Paul Church (Elizabeth Hainesworth)

    Judging from the furniture placed on it and the rearrangement of stones, the church interior at Swaffham Church has no doubt changed somewhat since Elizabeth Hainesworth was buried here in 1735. There’s not much of a story here that I can tell, as there isn’t much information that I can find out. As the stone says, Elizabeth died on 4 March 1735, aged 48 years old.

    Her husband Luke does appear in a few registers from the early eighteenth century from when he employed apprentices. He was a grocer and a mercer (dealer of fabrics) in Swaffham and there’s little doubt that he would have been comfortably off. They had at least one child between them, John Hainesworth, who was baptised on 25 May 1726. But, other than that, the on-line databases are producing nothing more. But I liked the stone, in a rather good state of repair for its age.

  • Swaffham – St. Peter and St. Paul Church (Robert Huson)

    Swaffham – St. Peter and St. Paul Church (Robert Huson)

    There’s no logic to these posts, just some graves of people at St. Peter and St. Paul Church in Swaffham which seemed intriguing.

    Robert Huson was born on 26 July 1808 and was baptised on 14 August 1808 in Swaffham, the son of Robert Hudson and Susan Allen. He married Mary Huson, who was 14 years younger than him, and he worked as a carpenter. He had a son, Arthur Huson, when he was aged 50 and by the 1871 census he was living with his wife and Arthur on Lynn Street in the town. He died in 1872 at the age of 64, with his son Arthur becoming a grocer, going bankrupt and starting over again. Relatives of Robert and Arthur still live today, but unfortunately, I can’t find out anything more about Robert Huson’s life. He rather disappeared off the radar, or at least the radar visible to me, for some decades and I can’t make out what he did with his life. One day I’ll solve some of these random little mysteries….

  • Swaffham – St. Peter and St. Paul Church (Guy Dennis Buckeridge)

    Swaffham – St. Peter and St. Paul Church (Guy Dennis Buckeridge)

    This grave is located within the churchyard of St. Peter and St. Paul Church in Swaffham.

    Guy Dennis Buckeridge was born in Johannesburg in 1895, the son of Alfred Dennis Buckeridge and Amy Buckeridge, but they moved to the UK at some stage and lived at 8, Cardigan Road in Richmond-on-Thames. He appears on numerous passenger lists though, returning to South Africa frequently. He joined an air force unit in Reading in 1916 and in early 1917, he began training as a night-time pilot.

    Lieutenant Buckeridge flew his last sortie on 21 August 1917 when he flew from RAF Marham in Norfolk. During his flight his aircraft got trapped in a spinning nose dive and he died the following day, at the age of 22. His next of kin, which was his wife, was duly informed and he was buried at Swaffham, which was near to where the aircraft had crashed and not far from RAF Marham.

    Norman Frank Dennis, who was Guy’s older brother, died on 26 April 1940, killed whilst serving in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.

  • Swaffham – St. Peter and St. Paul Church

    Swaffham – St. Peter and St. Paul Church

    The bulk of Swaffham’s main church was constructed between 1454 and 1490 and was built on the site of the previous church, of which nothing now remains.

    The main entrance to the church is at the west door. The tower took longer to build, not being completed until 1510.

    Looking towards the altar.

    And looking back towards the west end.

    The impressive hammer-beam roof, which dates to when the church was built.

    The war memorial window, which was designed by William Morris & Co.

    The pews in the main part of the nave date from the nineteenth century, having replaced the earlier box pews. These pew ends in the choir area are survivals from the earlier period, somewhere around the sixteenth century.

    The Pedlar of Swaffham and his dog, which are from an old folkstory, the details of which I’ve pinched from Wikipedia:

    “At last it happened that a shopkeeper there, hard by, having noted his fruitless standing, seeing that he neither sold any wares nor asked any almes, went to him and most earnestly begged to know what he wanted there, or what his business was; to which the pedlar honestly answered that he had dreamed that if he came to London and stood there upon the bridge he should hear good newse; at which the shop-keeper laught heartily, asking him if he was such a fool as to take a journey on such a silly errand, adding: “I’ll tell thee, country fellow, last night I dreamed that I was at Sopham, in Norfolk, a place utterly unknown to me, where methought behind a pedlar’s house in a certain orchard, and under a great oak tree, if I dug I should find a vast treasure! Now think you,” says he, “that I am such a fool to take such a long journey upon me upon the instigation of a silly dream? No, no, I’m wiser. Therefore, good fellow, learn wit from me, and get you home, and mind your business.”

    The pedlar observing his words, what he had say’d he dream’d, and knowing they concentred in him, glad of such joyfull newse, went speedily home, and digged and found a prodigious great treasure, with which he grew exceeding rich; and Soffham (Church) being for the most part fallen down, he set on workmen and rectified it most sumptuously, at his own charges; and to this day there is his statue therein, but in stone, with his pack at his back and his dogg at his heels; and his memory is also preserved by the same form or picture in most of the old glass windows, taverns, and alehouses of that town unto this day.”

    This brass was part of the memorial to Sir John Audley of Swaffham and it was moved to the wall to protect it from damage, although the brass dedicated to his wife had gone missing by 1781.

    I hadn’t realised that there was a connection to Oliver Cromwell in Swaffham, but this is the memorial to Catherine Steward, his maternal grandmother. Steward was born at Castle Acre in 1545 and died in 1590. The Scotsman reported in 1911 that Queen Mary, Prince Albert and Princess Mary had come to visit the church, and spent some time looking at this memorial. Not that the Parliamentarian troops of Cromwell showed the church much mercy in the seventeenth century, they fired guns at the wooden angels in the roof, smashed windows and destroyed some statues.

    On the subject of the local media, there was an announcement in the Bury and Norwich Post which has an interesting turn of phrase:

    “The banns were published in Swaffham Church between Robert Savage and Mary Avey, but two days later the young woman was attacked with a cold and inflammation and on the following Saturday she was a corpse”.

    I didn’t see anyone else whilst visiting the church and I can’t imagine it gets a lot of visitors at this time of the year, so it’s marvellous that they’ve kept it open during the day. The door is also an automatic one, which makes it more accessible than the arrangement (albeit a necessary one, as automatic doors don’t come cheap and often don’t exactly fit into the decor) in some churches.

    All rather lovely.

  • Swaffham – Red Lion

    Swaffham – Red Lion

    The Red Lion has been selling beer to the people of Swaffham since the late seventeenth century and there are also rooms at the rear of the pub for those wanting accommodation. The landlady at the Red Lion from 1896 until 1956 was Emma Dickerson, that’s certainly some stint working at any location. There’s a nice vibe about the pub, with the service being friendly and it feels like a community pub which is welcoming to all.

    In August 1761, someone pinched a “badly engraved and bruised on the foot” silver pint mug from the pub, with the landlord putting up a reward of half a guinea for its return. There’s such a sense of history about locations like this, albeit a crime that took place 258 years ago isn’t an inspiration for the future, it’s intriguing to think what this pub looked like back then.

    There were six real ales, which was a number that surprised me slightly, with a varied choice available. Unfortunately, my half pint of Elgoods Blackberry Porter was on the turn, although it remained drinkable. I suspect the staff would have happily changed it, but it wasn’t unpleasant, although the flavour was wrong, so I just kept it (I probably wouldn’t have been so forgiving if it was a pint). I’m moderately surprised that what appeared to be their only dark beer hadn’t sold a little quicker.

    All told, it’s a friendly little pub and the staff were cheerfully putting up Christmas decorations to make it feel festive. Not sure I like the positioning of the pool table there as it has taken out some of the space for seating and distorted the atmosphere somewhat, but if that’s what the customers like then I suppose it has to go somewhere. I didn’t order food, but it’s well reviewed and seemingly unpretentious. The owners seem to be working on improving the look and feel of the building, with everything being clean and well maintained. Hopefully, it’ll merrily on serving for customers for another few hundred years….