Landlord climbed into cage with lion to win a £5 bet!
MERVYN EDWARDS LOOKS BACK ON SOME COLOURFUL TALES FROM THE LONG LOST FORMER PUBS OF LONGTON...
The Gamekeeper in 1997.
“I used to drink in Longton pubs with sawdust on the floor
If you asked for gin in those days, they would throw you through the door.
How I miss the Hem Heath miners and the lads with potters’ rot
And the laugh-a-minute lock-ins at the Rose in Normacot.”
SO runs the first verse of a song I wrote last year about the demise of Longton pubs. I can’t wait to pull on my guitar and perform it in public, once we are out of lockdown, and to remind listeners of some of the Longton boozers that have been consigned to history.
I knew many of them on account of my penchant for fact-finding, people-watching solo pub crawls.
Of the 10 Longton pubs I visited on a solo pub crawl in late 1990, only two survive today, to wit, the Gardeners’ Rest and the George and Dragon – the estimable ‘Owd ‘Ut.’
The other eight either closed or were demolished.
Who remembers the
Gamekeeper (formerly the Trialsmen) in Warren Street, the Royal Oak in Uttoxeter Road, the Union Hotel in Uttoxeter Road, the Roebuck in Caroline Street, the Robin Hood and the Waterloo in the Strand and the Bridge and the Shamrock in Heathcote Road?
The notes in my pubs journal reveal a glimpse of Longton as it then was – a busy town with a plethora of hostelries.
Some of those pubs offered much quirky history – such as the aforementioned Roebuck, whose landlord, Francis H. Wolfe, set tongues wagging in 1901.
For a £5 bet, he entered a lion’s cage at Collins’ African Menagerie which had set up in town for the Shrovetide Fair.
When the lioness saw her tamer entering her cage with a complete stranger, the agitated old girl leapt from one side of the cage to the other.
However, Wolfe stood by the tamer’s side for some minutes whilst the audience roared their approval. He won the wager and walked back to the Roebuck in the company of his back-slapping followers.
I have mentioned the Trialsmen – which was surely a unique pub name. Historian Alan Mansell offered explanation in his book,
The Lost Liquor Licenses of Longton: “The Lord John Russell came into the Martin family of licensees with Bernard Martin, on 17th May, 1912 and stayed with them until the renowned Ethel Martin passed away on the 12th May, 1983. It was then that the fun started.
“It seems the new owner/ licensee accepted that the pub had been called Ethel Martin’s for so long that he decided to keep it in preference to the Lord John Russell (of which there was another in Dresden). Apparently, Ethel’s daughter did not like this idea and asked that her mother’s name be removed.
“So an anagram was made of the name and it was changed into The
Trials Men. When the last licensee took over, being a sportsman, he changed it yet again to The Gamekeeper.”
I entered the Union Hotel at 11.53am on the day of my 1990 pub crawl of Longton. An early-doors call? Don’t you believe it.
The tables in the lounge were already laid out with cutlery in anticipation of lunchtime trade. Although the interior was a bit of a curate’s egg – there was even a bar billiards table in there – parts of it were classy, particularly that section inside the bay windows that looked out on to Uttoxeter Road.
It was handily near to Longton bus station and was popular with those who had tickets for Jollees’ cabaret venue, sometimes attracting the star turns.
Ex-longton policeman Dave Scrivens told me that he had spotted Ken Dodd in the Union.
There are many other Longton pubs that I visited at various times whose history and atmosphere are worth discussing.
I knew some through my interest in music. I saw local entertainers the Banks Brothers perform at the Albion, on the corner of Uttoxeter Road and Morpeth Street, in 1986, while my own duo, Two For The Road, played the Top Vine at Sandford Hill, Longton.
The Albion has been traced back to the 1841 Census by Alan Mansell. It stood but a short walk away from St James’ church and churchyard.
It was an unpretentious little boozer that came to add a pool table and other creature comforts in order to change with the times – like a lizard sloughing its skin.
In my memory, it remained mediocre – and yet it did have a claim to fame, according to the CAMRA Potteries guidebook of 1984, which asserted that it was ‘certified as one of the twelve most haunted pubs in England.’
The Albion, having been closed for some time, was finally demolished in May of 2003.
As we saw earlier, some pub names commemorating historical figures changed in order to be more contemporary.
In the Strand stood the
Clarendon Hotel, or the Earl of Clarendon. The first Earl of Clarendon, Edward Hyde, was an English statesman and author. However, the name of this proud pub was altered to Hickory’s in the 1980s and then further trivialised when Longton wags began to dub it the Clock – after the famous nursery rhyme.
One 2016 photograph in my archive shows a Longton pub whose name was presumably changed by accident – but which inadvertently summed up the decline of industry in the town. The pub’s fascia sign lost one of its letters – so that the Last Post became the Last Pot.
The clock has run down on so many Longton pubs in recent years, hence the efforts of several of us to recreate their heyday on film and in music and song.
Back in 2013, a team of creatives from Staffordshire Film Archive filmed in the rather beautiful, old-fashioned, dimly-lit and wood-panelled lounge of the (Bottom) Vine pub in Middle Cross Street in Longton.
We were filming a history piece on the closure of pubs and beerhouses in days of yore, and I appeared as the pub landlord. Talk about poacher turned gamekeeper.
Other actors included historians Alan Mansell and Alan Myatt, and Mr Myatt’s wife, Glynis, who appeared as my barmaid.
We wore Victorian costumes and managed to create a tolerably authentic atmosphere – especially as some contraption had been hired to blow ‘pretend’ cigarette smoke around the room, thus enshrouding the players in the fake fug.
The following year, I was asked to appear in an episode of the reality TV series, Twenty Four Hours in the Past, much of which was filmed at Gladstone Pottery Museum in
Longton. It was again necessary to recreate a Victorian beerhouse – which this time came complete with a straw-covered floor, candle-lit rustic tables and Morris dancers.
We imbibed out of old dimpled glasses and pewter tankards – though sadly, the beer came out of tins from the local Tesco.
The song I mentioned earlier recalls several lost pubs of Longton, and we’ll sign off today with further extracts:
In the Shamrock and the Union, in the Top and Bottom Vine,
In the Three Tuns and the Roebuck where I smoked my first Woodbine, You could have a conversation, though you had a muzzy head There was no such thing as Facebook, people talked to you instead.
(Chorus) So get it down your neck, my friend, just get it down your neck.
Before they knock the last pub down, just get it down your neck!