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| Oxford Street looking west from the foot of Frogmoor c1905. The King’s Head to the left and the Half Moon to the right. Further down on the right is the Woolpack with what looks like a ladder propped up against it, and the Old Angel two doors further back (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Library) |
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This map shows the road layout c1875 and all the pubs in this post as far as the Ship on Oxford Road.
Key to pubs
1 King’s Head 2 Half Moon 3 Old Angel 4 Woolpack 5 Ye Exchange
6 Hogshead 7 Ship 8 Prince Albert 9 George & Dragon
In 1662 Meredith Jonas sold a property to Edward Bedder and others. Although there’s no mention of this property being a public house, Bedder had an interest in the Naggs [sic] Head, next door to the Maidenhead in the High Street, from 1656. By 1698 the house was the Saracen’s Head alehouse when Edward’s widow, Elizabeth, sold it to John Tomlins.
The name had changed by 1724 to the Sun when the pub was sold again.
Sometime between a sale of 1737, and another in 1794 to Samuel Veary, the Sun had ceased to trade, and it also appears to have become two cottages. In 1825 these cottages had become a dwelling and a shop, though Brown tells us that brewer John Rotton sold leaseholds to brewers Biddle & Wheeler in 1812 that included the King’s Head (1).
Both the dwelling and shop were sold to George Lloyd Parker in 1833. The earliest borough poor rate record of 1836 shows one of the properties as the King’s Head and one to the east of the alehouse as a shop.
When William Hawes took on the pub in 1850 he changed its name to the New Wheat Sheaf until he left in 1854. Then Weller’s brewery of Amersham took a 21-year lease with James Moody as licensee, while James Shephard had the shop next door. Parker sold both properties to Shephard in 1866, who then sold them to Thomas Marshall in 1872. Marshall sold the pub to Lucas’ Frogmoor brewery in 1881; we don’t know who had the lease, but it seems likely it was Lucas.
Architect Arthur Vernon carried out alterations to the building in 1894/5 to make it look less like a private house and more like a pub, as was the fashion at the time.
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| The King’s Head with a new frontage c1895 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
Nearly all of Oxford Street’s pubs by the late 1920s were old and cramped. They needed either rebuilding or moving to another site. In 1937 a plan to move the King’s Head to the old Temperance Hotel on the south-west corner of Frogmoor was, for reasons unknown, abandoned.
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| The King’s Head in 1953 with a 1930s frontage to compliment the Rex cinema’s art deco design of 1938 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Library) |
Rebuilding, to take in the Haven Restaurant to the east – that was the original shop mentioned in the 1825 sale – started in 1963 and was completed in 1965. The Callaway family had run the pub since 1903 until son Freddie retired when the old pub closed.
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| The King’s Head in 1972 in its dreary 1965 version. The new pub took in the Haven Restaurant to the left, and the Rex has gone too (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
Owners, Courage, swapped some pubs with Allied Breweries in 1978, including the King’s Head. It was refurbished in 1981 at a cost of £25,000. Renamed Byrd’s in 1983, it became a wine bar by 1985, though it also sold milk. Allied spent a further £20,000 on another refurbishment during a short closure in 1986.
The pub then disappeared after 1988 having become a series of cafes, bars and restaurants, including Capone’s in 1992, Liberty’s, also in 1992, and Bella Pasta in 1995. Today it is Roosters Piri Piri and Dennis’s restaurants.
Almost opposite the King’s Head was the Half Moon (2), first mentioned in the 1737 will of John Deane who left cottages next to the alehouse to beneficiaries. Nothing much else is known until Wheeler’s were the owners in the mid-1830s, though some sources suggest Wycombe brewers Samuel Welles and Messrs Biddle may have leased the pub in the late 18th century.
By the 1860s, when the Hearn family provided the licensees, it was clear it was already struggling for space as the pub’s stables were in Bowdery’s Lane and regular complaints were being made about wagons owned by the pub being left parked on Oxford Street for hours on end.
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| Clearing water from the flooded Half Moon in May 1930. One of these women is likely to be Ann Willis, the new licensee and widow of licensee Charles Willis who had died the previous month (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
By the 1920s overcrowding had become a problem. There were just two tiny bars measuring barely 10 feet by 10 feet each. Wheeler’s, relying on one of the findings of the Southborough Commission of 1926 that pubs should be improved, put forward a rebuilding plan in 1928 that would cost £3,000 to include the cottage next door. Meals would be provided, lavatories for both sexes and a bathroom for the landlord. The dining room would become the clubroom in the evenings. The magistrates, probably relying on another Southborough finding that there were too many pubs, declined the application though gave no reason for their decision.
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| Wheeler’s brewery’s plan of 1928 (courtesy of the Bucks Free Press archive, copyright Newspapers.com) |
Plans to rebuild the Half Moon were rejected again in 1930, shortly after Wheeler’s had been taken over by Ashby’s of Staines, who had then been bought by Simonds of Reading. A complaint by Wycombe brewers to the Royal Commission on Licensing in England and Wales about the perceived intransigence of the Wycombe licensing magistrates resulted in discussions – termed ‘conferences’ – between magistrates and brewers starting in August 1930. The magistrates’ message was that there were too many pubs in the town – if a brewer wanted to rebuild a pub or take the licence to a new area they would have to give up other licences too.
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| The dark interior of the Half Moon as depicted by Francis Colmer in 1929 (courtesy of the Bucks Free Press archive, copyright Newspapers.com) |
Simonds got the message and pursued a policy of ‘fewer and better’ pubs – see Wycombe's Suburban Pubs. An application to remove the licence to Dashwood Avenue was made in January 1933. The old Half Moon closed at the end of the year, as did the Pine Apple on West Wycombe Road – the price Simonds had to pay to get the old licence moved to a new area. The old building was sold at auction in early 1934 and demolished for redevelopment. The new building of 1934 is in place today.
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| The Half Moon in April 1934, closed and awaiting redevelopment (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Library) |
A few doors away from the Half Moon was the Old Angel (3) at 41 Oxford Street. The earliest record is from 1758 when Thomas Atkins is the licensee.
Local man Henry Wright owned the pub in 1845, then Byles & Son brewers of Henley in 1847, and from 1858 Brakspear’s Henley brewery.
In 1892 Brakspear’s applied to the magistrates to change the pub’s name to the Henley Ale Stores. The Bucks Free Press reported the magistrates asking if ‘old angels are out of fashion now?’ to much laughter. The response was that it suited the brewery’s business. Brakspear had a handful of pubs in Wycombe and a long journey from the brewery, so a store for beer and a plan to increase off-sales made business sense. The pub was in the hands of a manager by 1905.
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| To the right of John Busby’s shop is the Henley Ale Stores, formerly the Old Angel. The handsome Woolpack is to the left of Busby’s in this photograph of c1910 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Library) |
Much as a lack of space was to restrict the Half Moon’s business, it was to do the same to the Henley Ale Stores. By 1900 they were sharing storage space with corn merchant Taplin in Bowdery’s Lane when it burnt down causing £100 worth of damage.
World War One brought dramatic changes to British pubs and brewing. While beerhouses had restricted hours of opening – generally 6am to 10pm and closure during church-going hours on Sundays – alehouses could open much as they pleased, the only restrictions being on Sundays. The war brought about the limited lunchtime and evening opening hours that remained until 1988. The strength of beer typically fell from about 5% alcohol by volume to 3%.
One of the effects on pubs in the town centre was to prevent them trading in the afternoons on market days. Many of the pubs featured in this post then made applications to the magistrates for extensions after lunch, and some were granted; the Stores’ was not.
In 1927 the Stores applied to push back their bar counter by six feet to give customers more room and access to a fire. As this plan meant more drinking area the magistrates refused, and kept on refusing each time the plan was brought back to them. By 1937 Brakspear’s had found a new site at the junction of Desborough Avenue and Deeds Grove for a pub to be called the Wendover Arms. The Stores closed in 1938, the premises being sold at auction.
A door but one away from the Old Angel stood the Woolpack (4). This area of the town was known until well into the 19th century as Wycombe Foreigns, being outside the borough. It was marshy agricultural land with meadows and orchards until building began in the late 17th century. It’s not clear from property deeds exactly when the Woolpack emerged as an alehouse, though there appears to have been a building on the land by 1699. Victualler John Walker occupied a dwelling in 1754 and his name is in licensing records at the Woolpack in 1753, the first year such records were kept. A second Woolpack appears in licensing records from 1774, which became the Bird in Hand – see The pubs of Bird in Hand and Wycombe’s west end.
Owners changed regularly, though none had apparent links to brewing, until brandy merchant and Woolpack licensee Veazey [sic] Raffety bought the pub in 1791. By this time it was described as a ‘tenement’, formerly two, one of which had been occupied by John Walker, and various pieces of land.
Raffety died in 1803, his executors selling the Woolpack to Wycombe brewers Kingston & Crofts. In 1806 the pub and much other property was put in trust for brewer John Rotton. Rotton then sold the pub in 1809 to the sitting tenant James Lowndes, also a brandy merchant. Wethered’s brewery acquired a share of the property in 1829 and by 1833 owned it all.
By the early 20th century the Woolpack comprised public and private bars, a bar parlour, kitchen, four bedrooms, bathroom, clubroom, stables, shed and yard all for an annual rent of £20, with part of the premises available to sub-let for £20. Lavatories had been added in 1905. The cost to an incoming licensee was £200 for stock, fixtures and fittings, according to Horley’s, the Maidenhead pub broker.
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| A brewer’s dray delivering to the Woolpack in the 1890s (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
From 1900 it was the HQ of the Town Band, led by landlord William Sears. It had a slate club and, because it had places to keep a dead body ‘fresh’, it held inquests. A member of the local air gun shooting league, the Woolpack, like many pubs, turned to darts in the 1930s when it also hosted the London Transport Sports Association’s Wycombe branch.
In the same way that other Oxford Street pubs looked for more space to expand or somewhere new to take their licences so Wethered’s took the Woolpack out of town. Bill Curtis, the Woolpack’s last licensee, told the Bucks Free Press in 1993 that Wethered’s had spent very little on the pub since he became landlord in 1936; it was ‘old fashioned’, the kitchen was separate from the rest of the pub and ‘the living accommodation was disgusting’.
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| The Woolpack’s new licensee, Bill Curtis, in the doorway of his pub in 1936. It’s already in need of same paint (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
Wethered’s were probably biding their time until they had a suitable site and opportunity to take the licence elsewhere. An application was made early in 1956 to ‘remove’ the licence to a site at the foot of Arnison Avenue to be called the Happy Wanderer. The Woolpack closed on 15 May 1959. The Bucks Free Press reported the last night as if there had been a death: a long-distance lorry driver from Nottingham had driven an extra 50 miles ‘to pay his last respects’, while long-term customer Fred Ridgley said ‘This place has been home from home to me. I don’t know what I shall do now. I might even turn teetotal.’
Across the road from the Woolpack was Bowdery’s Lane, once called Temple Place. By 1838 there were two beerhouses in this road within a stone’s throw of Temple Mill. Beerhouses first appeared after the beerhouse act of 1830 was passed. There were many thousands of them.
One Temple Place beerhouse – neither are named – was kept by Richard Hawes and owned by John Cowden, and had closed by 1844. The second was owned by John and Joseph Lane and kept by John Sammons, and last appears in the 1841 poor rate records. William Steers owned this ‘late beerhouse’ in 1843. By 1855 John Henningham had opened a beerhouse in Steers’ property that was later to be called the Prince Albert (8). Comparison of tithe and 1910 Domesday maps show Steers’ house to have been both the Sammons and Henningham pubs.
Wheeler’s leased the pub from Alfred Steers in 1865 and owned it by 1910. It was a typical beerhouse. In the early 20th century it comprised a taproom, parlour, kitchen, three bedrooms, an adjoining cottage with three bedrooms for lodgers, a kitchen, yard, ‘fowl house’ with poultry, all for an annual rent of £12. The ingoing cost for a new beerhouse keeper was £25.
The brewster session of 1913 contained a surprise for licensee Ellen Smith because the police opposed the granting of a new license on the grounds that it ‘was of disorderly character, or frequented by thieves, prostitutes, or persons of bad character’. While the police witnesses gave evidence of persons of bad character being regularly found at the pub, they agreed, under cross examination, that there had been no offences linked to the pub or Mrs Smith. She had always helped the police and had never been warned about the conduct of her customers. Her solicitor told the bench that Mrs Smith had never been convicted of any offence.
Despite some dissent, the magistrates agreed to renew the licence for another year while warning Mrs Smith about taking more care about who she served at the pub and the lodgers she took in. Wheeler’s surrendered the licence in 1916, probably as a result of a slump in trade during the war rather than any misconduct.
Bowdery’s Lane was cleared in the 1960s and is now covered by the Abbey Way Flyover.
Turning back onto Oxford Street, a couple of doors away from the Woolpack was Ye Exchange (5), formerly the Lamb beerhouse. The poor rate book for 1838 is our earliest record of this pub, then a beerhouse called the Victoria, owned by John White. By 1843 it was known as the Lamb and by 1853 it was owned by the Frogmoor brewery of Richard Lucas, who then sold it two years later to Parsons' Lion brewery of Princes Risborough.
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| The Exchange beerhouse with shop before the 1887 rebuild (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
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| We can only catch a glimpse of Ye Exchange, on the left side of the street, and its bold signboard in the 1890s (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
Promotion to being an alehouse with a full licence to sell all liquor seems to have brought much new trade in the 1890s. By 1901 the annual rent for the pub of £40 was more than covered by letting out the stables. It hosted a Drum and Fife Band, formed a slate club, added a club room, hosted the High Wycombe Volunteer Rifle Club Band – licensee Walter Slater was a member – and poached the Thames Angling Association from the Royal Oak in Bridge Street.
In 1900 Parsons sold its business to the Welch Ale brewery of south London. Welch then sold most of its Buckinghamshire estate, including Ye Exchange, to the Aylesbury Brewery Company (ABC) in 1920.
Perhaps the most unusual person to have held the pub’s licence was John Grün who took over in 1910. At his licence application hearing, the magistrates were told Grün had been a naturalised British citizen for 20 years and had ‘recently been exhibiting himself as a strongman’. The magistrates commented ‘We hope you will not exhibit your strength except in the cause of law and order’. He did not tell the magistrates that he had suffered a serious injury in 1909.
Grün was a Luxembourger born in 1868. While working in a brewery in St Louis USA he became one of a strongman double act called The Two Marxs. By time he returned to Luxembourg in 1892 he could claim to be the strongest man in the world. As the Luxembourg Hercules he toured the circuses, theatres and music halls of the USA and Europe, even working with Harry Houdini, lifting stones, breaking horse shoes and tearing packs of playing cards in half.
Unfortunately Grün was less successful in paying his rates, being summoned two years in succession, or in observing statutory closing times at his pub. He was replaced as licensee and returned to Luxembourg in 1912 where he died later that year.
An application was made in 1952 to rebuild the pub to include a shop and a car park at the rear. The Borough Council refused the application and an appeal to the Ministry of Housing also failed. The plan was to reduce the size of the pub but incorporate a shop. It’s not entirely clear from reports in the Bucks Free Press what ABC was trying to achieve. However, new plans resulted in a rebuilt pub without a shop.
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| The 1953 version of Ye Exchange in 1972 to the right of Beadle & Crome. Like many pubs of the 1950s and 60s it is rather plain (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
Ye Exchange appeared to fall into bad hands in the early 1980s, as did some other pubs in the town. Theodolph Clarke had been the licensee since 1983 and was later convicted of handling stolen goods. A delay bringing him to trial led to him absconding abroad in 1986. It seems the pub closed around this time as it was acquired as part of the route of Archway Road from the Oxford Road roundabout to Temple End.
Not far from Ye Exchange on the south side of what now becomes Oxford Road was Temple Street, in which was the George & Dragon (9) beerhouse, owned and kept by George Pawley from at least early 1867. Richard Lucas’ Frogmoor brewery was the owner by 1872.
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| The George & Dragon in 1900 next door to the Free Methodist Schoolroom opened in that year (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
The George & Dragon was one of 12 pubs chosen by local brewers to be closed in the cull of 1903 – there’s more about this here. The de-licensed pub, adjoining cottage and yard were sold at auction to R J Howland for £400. Temple Street was cleared in the 1960s and is now a service road for the Eden Shopping Centre.
The last of the old alehouses on this journey was the Ship (7) at 112 Oxford Road. The first we know of it is in a deed of 1672 that describes property transferred by the Whitton, Bigg and Sale families for the benefit of John Bigg. Included is the Ship that had been built on Cawsey Mead. The name of the location suggests the Oxford Road here was a causeway between water meadows.
John Deane has the Ship in 1737 and bequeaths it in his will to his brother, Solomon. Some meadowland adjoining the alehouse is bequeathed to members of the Grover family, of whom John is the licensee in 1753.
After this, brewer David Squire leased the pub to another brewer, A E Biddle, in 1784. Squire sold it to the Biddle & King partnership in 1810. The Ship was a Wheeler’s house after 1854.
There’s no doubt the original Ship was small, but the document of 1737 mentions an adjoining cottage, which may later have been incorporated into the pub. In the late 19th century the Ship’s landlords were often in the chairmaking industry, suggesting outhouses and workshops had been added and also that income from the pub was perhaps limited.
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| A wide view of Oxford Road looking west with the Ship on the far right c1908 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
Alterations were made in 1893. These are likely to be a new frontage to make the building look more like a modern pub – many pubs in the town including the Kings Head and the Wheatsheaf in the High Street received modern frontages at this time – as well as a new scullery.
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| A closer view with a traffic jam c1895. The top of the Ship's new frontage can be made out (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
The Drum and Fife Band that had its headquarters at Ye Exchange in 1891 had been at the Ship in 1888. Their twice weekly practice sessions from eight until 10 in the evening led to complaints from the neighbours and, probably, the new venue. After this nuisance had been put down very little happened at the Ship beyond the usual slate club and some pub games such as darts and bar billiards. It’s not a surprise to find Simonds – Wheeler’s successor – being prepared to surrender the licence in 1953 in order to open the Micklefield Inn. The Ship closed in 1955.
After closure the building was used for retail businesses, first Glass & Decor and later Hoar’s bicycle shop before demolition for the new Sainsbury’s.
On the north side of Oxford Road facing down Bridge Street was the Van Inn, opened in 1857 and leased by Parsons' brewery from the owner. An advertisement of 1863 refers to the Van & Horses, but that name doesn’t reappear. The van of the title probably refers to a waggon used for carrying chairs, sometimes called, not inappropriately, a chair van, whose name had been taken by a pub in Newland in 1847.
What the Van Inn was not was an inn. It probably started life as a beerhouse and got its full licence by 1866. It was also industrial in that it had an undertaker and builder in the yard in 1863, and by 1869 it was described as a large premises with yard, [work]shops, stabling and garden. Next to it was Van Place, or Van Row, leading to the cattle market in Bellfield.
By 1871 the first alterations were planned to the frontage. Windsor chair manufacturer, Frederick Weedon, became the first long-serving licensee at this time. In 1877 he nearly lost his pub. The Free Methodist Chapel on Oxford Road was looking to expand. They were trying to raise funds to buy two houses in Remington Terrace. At a fund raising tea the Chairman proposed, to great cheers, buying the Van, building a new chapel on the site and using the existing chapel as a temperance hall. Luckily for Weedon the plan did not come to fruition, though Weedon’s obituary of 1904 says that as well as being a watercress grower he was, surprisingly, a member of the Oxford Road Free Methodist congregation.
One of the perennial dangers of being surrounded by industry, and particularly the furniture industry, was fire. A fire in Van Place destroyed some chair workshops and threatened cottages in 1883. Cottages and pub were saved by the Volunteer Fire Brigade and the Frogmoor brewery’s fire engine.
Parsons' brewery was preparing to sell its business, including its freehold and leasehold pubs, in 1899. The Van’s lease was listed in auction sale particulars and may have been sold to the Welch Ale brewery in 1900. However, not all of Parsons’ pubs ended up with Welch Ale. In 1901 Weller’s brewery were in charge and were applying for permission to alter the pub. Weller’s bought the Van from Constance Chadwick in 1902.
After Weller’s purchase the pub broker, Horley’s of Maidenhead, described the pub as having three entrances, public and private bars, bar parlour, five-pull beer engine – a cabinet comprising five hand pulls for five different beer barrels – bottle and jug department, large clubroom, kitchen, scullery, cellar, six upstairs rooms, yard and stables. Takings were £20 a week, rent £40 a year, though some part of the premises not used for pub business was being sublet for £50 a year, and the licensee was not tied to Weller’s when buying spirits.
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| The Van in the 1920s with, perhaps, William Bender and son. Windows and facias are used to advertise drinks available, while the sign makes it clear that Weller’s much admired Entire is available. Bass and Guinness were served in bottles (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
In 1920 the second long-serving licensee, Samuel Campion, left and a third man whose family was to be at the Van for many years, William Bender, took over. In 1929 the new owners were Benskins of Watford, who had bought Weller’s brewery and pub estate. They applied to make changes to the commercial and club rooms, improve the lavatories, remodel the bar area and create better accommodation for the tenant. The changes were approved in 1932.
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| The Van in the 1950s showing off its still fresh-looking Benskins’ modernisation of 1932 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Library) |
Weekly sales of beer were over nine barrels in 1930, which was a significant amount for a pub out of town. The Bellfield cattle market brought good trade and a regular application to the magistrates to open in the afternoon on market days.
The good sales figures of 1930 may have signalled a peak, despite the economic depression. There were darts and bar billiards teams, but by the 1960s the pub had resorted to hosting regular sales of carpets from an unused room. The last mention of the Van in the press is in January 1973, closure being complete by the end of the year. Newman House was built on part of the site, which was later replaced by Sainsbury’s.
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| Benskins was absorbed by Ind Coope in 1957 who, in turn, became part of Allied Breweries in 1961. This shot from 1968 shows the Van after a coat of fresh paint with the temporary sign swinging in the wind (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
At a place called Mount Pleasant, before Westbourne Street, stood the Carrington Arms, opened some time between 1829 and 1838. This pub was owned by Thomas Jeffreys, then by his wife Ann from 1855 until the Frogmoor brewery bought it at auction in 1859.
Like the Van Inn, the Carrington Arms may have started as a beerhouse before getting a full alehouse licence, which it certainly had by 1866. The 1859 auction particulars describe it as two of eight brick and tile cottages with a frontage of 20 feet. The collection of cottages owned by the Jeffreys in Mount Pleasant also included, from 1841 until 1845, an unnamed beerhouse. The licensee of the Carrington Arms in 1838 was Thomas Marshall; in 1841 he had moved to the beerhouse, while Thomas Peppall took over at the Carrington Arms.
The Frogmoor brewery rebuilt the Carrington Arms in 1887 fronting Oxford Road. The new pub comprised private and public bars, smoke room, clubroom, parlour, kitchen, scullery, four bedrooms, conservatory, yard and stables. Annual rent was £28.
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| The rebuilt Carrington Arms c1890 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Library) |
After the rebuilding it began to take on the typical activities of public houses from the late 19th century until World War Two: a slate club, a friendly society branch – Hearts of Oak – inquests, a cricket club and an air gun club – replaced by darts in the 1930s. Either side of World War One it hosted the High Wycombe Sweet Pea and Floral Society and from 1922 the Carrington Lodge of Buffaloes, who used a ‘spacious lodge room’ decorated with regalia.
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| Wheeler’s signage had little time left when this picture of the Carrington Arms was taken in the late 1920s (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Library) |
Involvement in pub games and sports reached its height between the world wars. The Carrington Arms took a particular interest in the development of the High Wycombe Sports League (HWSL). As well as a darts league the HWSL looked to create other sporting leagues from the mid-1930s until World War Two saw sporting activity virtually stop: leagues were either formed, or were explored, for tennis, table tennis, snooker, bar billiards, cricket and angling.
It helped, when developing pub activities, to have a dynamic licensee. Robert Green was such a man at the Carrington Arms from 1911. By the 1930s it was clear that other parts of the town needed pubs that would have facilities for developing new activities for a new set of suburban customers. The only way to do this was to give up licences in the town.
In 1938 Bob Green and Simonds brewery applied to remove the Carrington Arms licence to a new site in Booker at the junction of Cressex and New Roads, also to be called the Carrington Arms. The magistrates refused the application and the site later became the Turnpike. Green moved to the Hour Glass.
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| The Carrington Arms as a Courage pub in 1965 as redevelopment of the Oxford Road continues. The river will disappear from view shortly (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
We hear very little about the pub after 1938 until Mrs June Parford made the news in 1968 as the first woman in Wycombe, apart from widows of deceased licensees, to be granted a pub licence. The Oxford Road at this time was being rapidly developed and Mrs Parford only had a short time at the Carrington Arms before it closed and was demolished in 1971. Aria House now stands on the site.
Opposite the turn into Westbourne Street, where Ash Mill once stood, was Hobbs Lane. There were eight cottages in Hobbs Lane in 1838 all owned by William Dancer. The first mention of an unnamed beerhouse kept by George Mines and owned by Ann Russell is in 1869, though a John Mines had been in Hobbs Lane since 1855. By 1872 it was called the Chairmakers’ Arms.
The only information we have about this Chairmakers’ Arms relates to its closure. Wheeler’s wanted to open a new pub on the corner of Westbourne and Brook Streets in 1875 and applied to the magistrates for a licence, while also offering to surrender the licence of the Hobbs Lane house they had bought for £700 and let to Thomas Cox at a rent of £20 a year.
The magistrates visited Brook Street and Hobbs Lane remarking that the beerhouse wasn’t doing much trade and that it ‘was not quite of the character required in the present day’. While they agreed to Wheeler's proposal the county licensing committee did not.
The following year, Wheeler’s applied again. The magistrates this time refused the application saying that as nothing had changed since 1875 the licensing committee would also refuse.
By 1877 Wheeler’s were able to demonstrate that where the new pub would be was more built up than in 1875 and in need of a pub. The magistrates agreed the application as did the licensing committee, and Thomas Cox had a new pub.
The last 19th century pub in this survey was the Nag’s Head beerhouse on the end of a row of nine houses with gardens called Havergal’s Row at the top of a rise known as Cox’s Pitch. The first mention of a beerhouse is in an 1853 trade directory when Edwin or Edmund Fryer is a beerhouse keeper – also a boot and shoe maker – in a house owned by Miss Hedges. He’s also at the house in 1852 but we have no directory for that year. The house appears in the first poor rate record of 1838.
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| Looking west outside the Nag’s Head with the jettied houses of Havergal’s Row beyond c1895 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
Edwin Skull owned the house by 1854 and the Weller brewery of Amersham bought it from him 1857. Weller’s property records show the pub to have a frontage of 40 feet and to have previously been called Madeley’s Folly, though who Madeley was and why it was a folly is not known.
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| The Nag’s Head with Benskins signage in 1936. Havergal’s Row is by then known as Sunny Bank (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
A comparison of rateable values of some of the pubs in our survey around 1910 serves to show their relative size, importance and business done. Two lowly beerhouses (Nag’s Head and Prince Albert) are valued at £15 each, two small and old fashioned alehouses (Half Moon and Ship) at £18, two thriving mid-Victorian alehouses (Carrington Arms and Ye Exchange) at £28, and the oldest alehouse closest to the centre of town, the King’s Head, at £30.
The Nag’s Head lived the quietest life of any pub on the Oxford Road. In the autumn of 1958 it had withdrawn from a local darts league after being unable to raise a team. It closed in 1959 after the licensee, Archibald Buckmaster, died just six months after his son had been killed in an air crash. The pub became a house and shop.
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| The former Nag’s Head today (the author) |
The last pub to open on Oxford Road was also the last of its pubs to close. Whitbread plc converted the former Hull Loosely & Pearce shop at 120 Oxford Road to one of its chain of Hogshead (6) ale houses in 1997, spending £750,000 on the conversion. The building, belonging to the Loosley Trust, dated back to 1930 when a road widening scheme caused the old shop to be replaced by a new one set back 50 feet from the road.
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| The new Hull Loosley & Pearce shop (left) in early 1931. The entrance to Temple Street is on the right (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Library) |
The Laurel Pub Company – a ‘pubco’ set up to run Whitbread’s pub estate after the brewery was sold in 2000 – took over the lease in 2001. Laurel went into administration in 2008 and, despite a rescue, had collapsed by the end of the year. The Hogshead closed.
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| The Hogshead (or ‘hog’s head’ in this case) seen from the top of the evolving Eden Centre (courtesy of wellingtonbootblog) |
Enter J D Wetherspoon plc to spend another £500,000 on a transformation into the William Robert Loosley, which opened at the end of 2008. Wetherspoons have always been known for their conversions of shops, banks and even swimming baths into pubs, so the shop was an obvious choice for them even if Whitbread had made the initial conversion.
It might have been the fact that Wetherspoons found themselves with two pubs in the town – one of which, ironically, had been a pub for several centuries – or the poor economic conditions after 2008 but the William Robert Loosley lasted only until 2017, despite Wetherspoons reversing their earlier closure plan of 2016.
The third iteration of the pub was as the Chiltern Taps – this time owned by the Stonegate Pub Company to whom Wetherspoons agreed to sell.
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| Chiltern Taps (courtesy of wellingtonbootblog) |
Stonegate acquired the Ei Group, formerly the largest UK pubco, in 2020, making the now Stonegate Group the largest UK pubco. The Chiltern Taps was sold to the newly formed RedCat pubco in 2021 becoming one of their RedCat Leased Pubs.
Bad luck struck again in early 2024 when the leased pubs arm of RedCat went into administration, the Chiltern Taps being chosen as one of five pubs to close. It is boarded up at the time of writing, though advertised to buy or let.
As the saying goes, ‘use it or lose it’, but in recent years, despite anecdotal evidence that the pub was being used, it was not used enough to make a profit.
Sources
Buckinghamshire Archives for licensing records, property deeds, poor rate records, the 1910 Domesday Survey, original tithe records and the late Harvey Coltman’s analysis of the tithe records.
SWOP (Sharing Wycombe’s Old Photographs).
The Bucks Free Press archive.
Trade directories held at High Wycombe Library and accessed through University of Leicester special collections.
Census records accessed through The Genealogist.
Wellington Boot website wellingtonbootblog.wordpress.com
company-histories.com
Companies House on GOV.UK
BROWN, Mike 2007, ABC: A Brewers’ Compendium: A Directory Of Buckinghamshire Brewers, Brewery History Society: Longfield.
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