This was once the Eight Ringers pub in Wells which was a licensed premises between the late eighteenth century and 1971 when it finally closed. It was initially a free trade pub before becoming part of Bullards and then Watney Mann, but they didn’t feel that the venue was viable and it is now split up into flats.
It came up for sale in 1904 and it was advertised as being:
“A fully licensed public house with large yard, good stable and outbuildings, suitable for any trade”.
The landlord between 1905 and 1909 was Frederick Powell and he seems to have been something of a character. He was charged of being drunk in his own licensed premises and then using bad language to a police officer who was investigating the matter, with the fine for the bad language alone being 9 shillings including the costs.
The pub seems to have struggled with their landlords as the long-standing Eleanor Cross was at the premises for over thirty years and was found guilty of adding water to whiskey. The situation seems complex, she claims that the inspector made her open a bottle which she never tried to serve from and she claimed that was her own whiskey as “her heart was bad” but the court didn’t believe it.
The landlord between 1947 and 1961 was Frank Moore and then his wife managed the house between 1961 and 1966. She attracted the interest of the national newspapers in 1962 when her 40 year old cactus bloomed with nine buds. She was so excited that she moved it to the bar and customers could see the buds blooming in front of them. They then all died overnight, so that was the end of that excitement.
There’s a plaque on the building from a local history group, otherwise I would have known that this used to be a pub. As for the name, a traditional English ring of church bells can consist of eight bells, each with its own ringer, which presumably explains the Eight Ringers. There were periods in the pub’s early history when it was instead known as the Six Ringers, so goodness knows what happened to the other two. Perhaps they had been barred.