The Anchor, Ringmer, 2nd June 1838

For those of you wanting something a little different from the usual pub heritage or beer tasting notes so far found on this Blog, here is the tragic tale of Hannah Smith’s last ever evening of drinking, at the Anchor, Ringmer, East Sussex, 173 years ago. Much of what follows is taken from W. H. Johnson’s, very readable (2005) book, Sussex Murders.

In May of 1841 Superintendent Francis Fagan of the recently formed East Sussex Constabulary received an anonymous letter, cryptically hinting at the guilt of four men implicated in an incident at Ringmer nearly three years earlier. It had been early in the morning of 2nd June 1838 that itinerant peddler Hannah Devonshire, known as Hannah Smith, being the common-in-law wife of one William Smith, left her Lewes home with a pack of rags slung on her back and a basket of trinkets over her arm, ready for a day’s hawking of her wares at Ringmer. Not a great deal of selling had been done by 9am, the time she arrived at Elizabeth Stephens’ beer shop near Ringmer Green. There she gained a companion, General Washer, a 56-year old farm labourer with a quaint Christian name given after his father’s service in the militia.

Smith and Washer remained at the beer shop supping on beer and eels until around 2pm when they moved onto the Green Man. After another six hours or so of drinking they arrived at the Anchor where at some point they were joined in the taproom by three other men, all in their 20s, Charles Briggs, a labourer, Stephen Steadman, a whitesmith, and John Pockney, a blacksmith. The landlady of the Anchor, Ann Stanford, chose to close up at 11pm and enquired of Hannah Smith whether she was afraid of the road back to Lewes late at night. Smith replied that she had been on the road too many times to be afraid and, according to Stanford, appeared to depart steadily despite what had been a fourteen-hour drinking session. “No one will hurt me”, were Smith’s parting words.

Around 6am the next morning Hannah Smith was found in the pond behind the vicarage (pictured right) by John Gaston, gardener to the local curate. Gaston summoned help and a futile attempt was made to revive the retrieved body, including sending to the Anchor for brandy. This group of witnesses including Henry Weller, the parish constable, noted that a willow tree growing around the pond’s edge showed signs of damage and that the surrounding grass had been trampled, footmarks being clearly visible in the morning dew. Smith’s basket was discovered nearby but contained little of her wares – she had been too busy drinking to sell them so had most likely been robbed. After the news of the incident spread, General Washer was one of those who came to view the corpse lying by the pool. Smith’s body was then taken in a wheelbarrow and stored in the shed of the Briggs family – Charles Briggs had been one of the other men last seen with her.

Despite the obviously suspicious circumstances surrounding Smith’s death, the coroner’s inquest at the Anchor that same afternoon could only reach the open verdict of ‘found drowned’. There was in those days no such thing as a ‘crime scene investigation’ and the body had been only perfunctorily examined after it was clear there were no obvious marks of violence on the upper parts. The subsequent investigation, such as it was in the era before forensic science and professional policing, came to nothing, despite Steadman, one of the four men drinking with Smith on that fateful night, showing signs of guilt by departing the village very suddenly. Now nearly three years later, Pockney was another of the four to leave Ringmer in a hurry, no doubt panicked by Superintendent Fagan’s own enquiry, set in motion by that tip-off via the anonymous letter.

Fagan was no bumbling country amateur. After serving on the Bow Street Foot Patrol he’d been commissioned into the Metropolitan force as Inspector. During October 1841 Fagan arrested all four of Smith’s final night drinking companions. But with the accused having given their testimonies - often conflicting and contradictory, either non-committal or designed to attribute blame to others, sometimes retracted - it became clear at the trial on 3rd March 1842 that there was insufficient evidence to proceed with the preferred changes of murder and larceny. The case against General Washer had already been dropped, while the judge directed the jury to exonerate Briggs on the basis that no prisoner could be convicted only on the evidence of his said accomplices, a point correct in law in those days.

Both Pockney and Steadman were found guilty of larceny and sentenced to two years and to eighteen months hard labour respectively. But they could consider themselves fortunate, for not only did they escape the more serious charge of assault, their same actions today could have seen them stand trial for rape. So what did happen on that evening of 2nd June? The testimonies are clear on the main points. After leaving the Anchor, the three young men had repeated ‘connections’ with Hannah Smith in the field above the pond. Pockney clamed he agreed this with her beforehand but Steadman suggested Smith to be so much in drink as to be unaware of the ‘assault on her person’ that was taking place. Either way, Smith remained insensible enough to be robbed of her basket of trinkets, the proceeds of which were divided up in the churchyard (pictured). The near empty basket was then returned to where she had passed out.

The inference is that Smith awoke in the field and, still deep in drink, slung her pack of rags back over her shoulder. Unbalanced by the weight, she staggered and slid down the slope into the pond, clutching desperately at the willow branches at the side before slipping below the surface of the eight-foot deep water. Or was it the case that the three men were so fearful of the consequences of their actions they pushed Smith into the pond to silence her for ever, trampling the grass and breaking the willow branches in the process?

Hannah Smith is buried in Ringmer churchyard. She was referred to by both General Washer and Stephen Steadman as ‘the old woman’. She was but 43 years old.

Sources:

Johnson, W. H. (2005) Sussex Murders, Stroud: Sutton Publishing.

Welcome to Brighton visitoruk.com, http://www.brightonuk.co.uk/historydetail.php?id=29700&f=Brighton (Accessed 12^th August 2011)

The Dorset, Brighton

This three-storey Georgian building had acquired its license by 1822. The ground floor bar boasts a fine raked counter, probably Edwardian, with pilasters and console brackets. There would once have been back fittings, possibly with a tall stillion but these have been stripped out and the good quality bar top is a replacement. At the rear of the servery by the access to the toilets is an office-like structure and screen with 1930s glasswork. Along the Upper Gardner Street side is a 1930s brick fireplace and what is now the opened-up restaurant room appears to have once been a separate property. There is a skylight with 1930s glasswork and an old, oddly positioned internal door. At both ends of the pub are attractive Art-Nouveau lincrusta dados.

The street-corner site was previously partitioned into a Public Bar, central Bottle & Jug Dept., and Private Bar, as can be seen from the names in the splendidly decorative set of etched glass doors and windows. A Bottle & Jug (often a Jug & Bottle or Off-Sales) was a small sectioned area of a pub with its own street entrance or hatch where beer could be purchased for consumption off the premises, the implication of the name being that customers brought their own bottles or jugs along to be filled. The Public Bar was the cheapest and most basic drinking room on any pub premises but Private Bar suggests a more exclusive area, restricted perhaps to a well-known set of regular patrons.

These old room divisions reflect markers of social status, so important in Victorian and Edwardian England, and external evidence for them can still be seen in a number of pubs once owned, like the Dorset, by the now-defunct Brighton-based brewery, Tamplin & Sons. Another clue to the past ownership of a pub by Tamplins is the sometimes appearance of a bird motif in the etched glasswork, usually of an external window. The type of bird varies, and far from all ex-Tamplins pubs bear this motif. Nonetheless, all but one of the pubs I have so far discovered to have this distinctive bird motif can be ascertained to have once been owned by Tamplins.

In the late 1920s, the Dorset was a “Vat” (a meeting place for gatherings) of the charitable organisation The Ancient Order of Froth Blowers (AOFB). The head of the Vat was often the relevant publican, and listed under the Dorset entry in a surviving AOFB membership booklet is Blower B. Edwards, ‘Blower’ being not a nickname but a rank within the order. The initial B may be a misprint because my own trawling through the Brighton voters lists from 1927-1933 turns up at this address a Herbert Henry Edwards and Katie Edwards. The AOFB was formally wound-up by the end of 1931 but not before attracting a worldwide membership of around 700,000 and raising more than £100,000 for children’s charities.

Rose Collis’s informative book Brighton Boozers  records that the Brighton Lesbian Group held socials here at the Dorset Arms on Sundays and Wednesdays in the early 1980s. Inquisitive regulars were told by the landlady Irene Shields that the group were the ‘Ladies Sports Club’! Having dropped the ‘Arms’ from its name, the Dorset is now a continental-style café bar with window blinds.

The Dorset, 28 North Road, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 1YB http://www.thedorset.co.uk/

The Windmill, Littleworth

A History of the County of Sussex records that the Windmill existed in 1909 and possibly earlier and was the meeting of a ‘slate club’ in 1916. The Post Office Directory of 1878 lists a Felix Thomas, beer retailer of Littleworth. The only beer retailer at Littleworth in Kelly’s Directory of 1891, 1899 and 1905 is Thom. Knight, while Barton Snelling is listed as the only beer retailer in the village in the 1911 and 1915 editions. The tendency for beer houses (those without a spirits licence) to be listed in old directories under the proprietor’s name suggests that these entries are for the Windmill. The pub is almost certainly named after Jolesfield Windmill, an eight-sided tarred smock mill that stood in the village until the early 1960s. The pub exterior is in classic hung-tile Sussex style, while the present interior layout of small public bar at the front-left, small lounge to the rear-right and quarry tiled drinking passage between the two rooms has been like this for over 50 years.

The public bar has a rustic atmosphere with scrubbed tables, old agricultural relics, bar billiards table and dartboard. The comfortable lounge, in complete contrast, is tartan carpeted with upholstered seating and houses an appropriate collection of small windmills. The public bar serving hatch, lounge bar counter and brick fireplace, porch entrance, front windows and floor tiles in the passageway all date from an interwar refit. Back shelving is probably of the same period but with some post-war additions. Flagstone floors appear modern. The landlord, Hall and Woodhouse tenant Michael Lennon, has a photo from the late 1940s showing the matchwood panelling in the front bar just as it is today. The panelling exactly matches the design of the serving hatch counter front. The pub was previously in the ownership of the now-defunct King and Barnes brewery, Horsham, and their livery can be seen over the porch entrance.

The Windmill, Littleworth Lane, Littleworth, near Partridge Green, West Sussex, RH13 8EJ

Sources:

‘West Grinstead’, A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 6 Part 2: Bramber Rape (North-Western Part) including Horsham (1986), pp. 83-89. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=18329 Date accessed: 10 August 2011.

Colonnade Bar, Brighton

By 1854 a John Edwin had turned these premises, previously occupied by a boot maker, into the Colonnade Stores Refreshment Rooms and two years later, Wine and Supper Rooms. A hotel designation first appears in directories in 1859. This has been for many years the ground-floor bar to the (Georgian) Theatre Royal and is today operated by the Golden Lion Group. The green-painted elegant Edwardian façade is recessed under a flattened archway with decorative spandrels and pilasters topped with Corinthian capitals. Looking out from a central projecting bay is ‘Willie’ an antique automated mannequin dressed for the theatre in top hat and tails, carrying a cane.

On the narrow strips of far wall are tiled panels painted and signed by Webb & Co., 294 Euston Road, London, N. W. Each carries a thistle design in turquoise and rust on cream with the centrepiece advertising THE COLONNADE HOTEL. The now defunct left-hand door and those skylights above are inset with deep etched glass. The single room interior has depth but is narrowed by the Edwardian servery down the left hand side, the decorative features of which match the exterior façade. The carved three-bay bar back has arched framed mirrors and a small glass panel at the centre painted with Britannia figure trade mark. Brass rails line both top and bottom of the carved counter. Along the wall opposite runs a row of lamp-illuminated timber framed mirrors, having the desired effect of making the room appear larger than it is.

Above is a red decorative plaster ceiling with moulded cornice at the rear and a short partition with etched-glass by the entrance door. There was probably a matching partition the other side, creating a Private Bar, when the left-door was in use. At the front and back of the room is upholstered bench seating, contemporaneous perhaps (1950s or 1960s) with the padded panels covering the counter front. It is easy to feel so cosily cocooned within these soft-lit surroundings of autographed photographs of actors, ancient playbills, sumptuous curtain swags and red plush décor at the Colonnade Bar, 10 New Road, Brighton, East Sussex.
http://www.goldenliongroup.co.uk/bars-and-pubs/colonnade-bar

The Ladies Mile, Brighton

A purpose-built estate pub, the Ladies Mile dates from c. 1934. The central gable with relief carving roundel of horse-riding figure accompanied by hounds explains the name: the land was once a measured terrain for female equestrians. A projecting colonnade produces a pleasing deco curvature to the front elevation. The continental coalescence of graceful curvature, geometrical patterns and sleek lines we now call Art Deco found its British apotheosis in Odeon cinemas and certain London underground stations but was not favoured for pubs. The design of ‘improved’ interwar public houses typically tended towards Brewers’ Tudor and neo-Georgian, producing comfortably conservative and nostalgic visions of ‘Merrie England’ and the Coaching Era, so surviving pub interior deco work such as that found at the Ladies Mile is particularly rare.

The central Saloon Bar vestibule and left-side disused Public Bar entrance (now a fire-escape) both retain fine brass plates and curved-cornered windows. Another ex-door on the right denotes that the pub was originally built with three separate bars; the internal walls were knocked through to create one lengthy room c. 1967/8. Marking the old divisions is a couple of back-to-back original fireplaces in grey marble; three of the four sides bear a carved horse-rider panel in the quality wood surround.

A horse rider motif again appears in the central panel of the long, gently curving counter. Although original, this counter now runs the full length of the pub though the old wall divisions and it would appear that that the central part was truncated and the two ends re-situated to create what we now see.

                                                     

The back-fittings are mostly original although the gantry is a 1960s addition. The Art Deco statuette as a counter-top centrepiece is some 18 inches high and inscribed with the maker’s name, Roche. The banquette seating with its statuettes was probably fitted in 1960 when the pub was acquired by the Brighton-based brewery, Tamplins. At each end of the pub the toilets retain their deco doors; the interiors of the Gents and Ladies on the left are largely intact. But by far the most striking feature appears above your head on entering the pub: a six-sided stained-glass skylight in red, lime and gold.

Also visit the right-side free-standing brick-built function hall with barrel-vaulted roof. The front lobby retains its terrazzo floor and many original features of the toilets. The main room was once divided by a folding wall. Both the bar-back and counter are also original but the latter lies under a 1960s re-fronting.

The Ladies Mile, 2 Mackie Avenue, Patcham, Brighton, BN1 8RA.
http://www.goldenliongroup.co.uk/bars-and-pubs/ladies-mile

Anchor Springs Undercurrent

Although Rip Tide is by far the best-selling Anchor Springs beer, I agree with brewer Frank McCabe that Undercurrent is superior in comparison. At 1045° OG and 4.2% ABV, Undercurrent is a bronze/light-copper coloured traditional English bitter with a modern twist. Brewed with pale, crystal, amber and chocolate malts, Target is used for the bittering hop, then East Kent Goldings and, finally, Cascade and Fuggles. The nose is hoppy with chocolate in the first taste; a deliciously nutty palate predominates giving way to Frank’s trademark, a lingering bitter finish.

Find it at the brewery tap, the Good Beer Guide-listed Crown, 29 High Street, Littlehampton, West Sussex. http://www.thecrownlittlehampton.co.uk/

Anchor Springs: a range of quality premium beers to suit different palates for the discerning drinker.

A Tribute to Chas Saunders

Crawley-based Chas Saunders (pictured left) made such an impression on me by his geniality and enormous enthusiasm (a feeling, I suspect, shared by all who met him), I am incredulous, thinking back, that we met on only a few occasions and the first of those was as recent as 23 January 2010. That was the date of my pub heritage tour of Brighton. Chas introduced himself to me as we sat at the bar of the Quadrant, and in a generous gesture I later discovered to be typical, pulled out from his raincoat pocket a present for me – a sheaf of papers on which he’d photocopied pictures of all of the pubs on my tour, annotated with notes on their histories. We then avidly discussed pub history for the duration of our stay. Chas was, after all, a self-styled Pubologist and it was through his Pubology website  - http://www.pubology.com/ - that I had first heard of him.

From that point we entered into a correspondence, almost always on the topic of beer and pubs, except for the occasional digression into Gods. Chas’s letters were works of art in themselves, as shown by the composite image below. Photocopied onto them was Chas’s Pubology business card as a header followed by pictures of pubs and assorted illustrations arrayed around the fine calligraphy. These letters were full of optimism, enthusiasm and humour – “Amidst much pubbing, beer festivals etc. I have been to Battle of Hastings re-creation. The Bloody Normans won again! Wonderful show but NO beer tent. English Heritage Indeed!” To receive an envelope addressed with that unmistakable slanted but precise penmanship always filled me with enormous anticipatory pleasure at such delights contained within.

Even when Chas’s letters began to remark on his illness, they lost little of their optimism – “Beer is part of my medication!” he wrote to me in February this year. It therefore came as a shock when I received the news that Chas had passed away peacefully at home on 9 June, aged 77, surrounded by his many projects. Charles Edward Saunders, cartoonist, author, jazz drummer, inventor of board games, real ale lover and, of course, Pubologist, while it saddens me to think that I will never again receive another of your letters, I will always derive great pleasure from re-reading those that I have.

Our thoughts at this time go to his family and friends.