The Pub History Project has two principal aims. It is a collaboration between Barry Lount, who has spent his professional life in pubs and brewing whilst developing an amateur interest in history, and Dr Stephen Bunker, who has pursued a professional career in the latter and a recreational interest in the former.
Its first aim is to provide online access to Barry’s lifetime of research, recording the names of hundreds of Leicester pubs from the 13th century Bell, through to the present day. As even a cursory perusal of this site will indicate, the history of the public house is a very fluent one indeed, with frequent changes of licensee, switches of name and transference of licence. It is hoped that flexibility afforded by an online directory will be able to incorporate regular updating to a degree that a hard copy publication would not.
New information, therefore, will always be welcome and due acknowledgement given. The Pub History Project began nearly forty years ago as a general interest inquiry on Barry’s part. As it evolved, informal permission was granted for access to material – usually pictorial – and wherever possible such acknowledgment will be reproduced here. If, however, anything has been reproduced here that is the legal copyright of some other party is not acknowledged, please contact us and this will be addressed.
As such, we hope that the Pub History Project provides an ongoing database for those interested in Leicester’s past in particular, and the evolution of the public house in general.
Beyond serving as a detailed gazetteer, however, there is a second aim for the Pub History Project. The English pub is ubiquitous. Most of us have passed under a pub sign on a variety of errands and as such the pub’s place in Britain’s historical landscape embraces leisure, politics, crime, family life, gender relations, welfare and local identity. In the lifetime of Barry’s research there has been a rapid expansion of all kinds of historical investigation. This has included interest as varied as historical architecture, sport, women’s history, recording people’s memories, business history and changing family life. Many of these interests have developed into specialist branches of historical research in their own right, complete with their own cycle of meetings and publications.
Sometimes the pub has played a pivotal part in people’s history, even if fleetingly. The hope of the Pub History Project is that it will serve as some sort of meeting point for all these diverse elements: a bit like a pub itself, I suppose. The authors will, therefore, be seeking to place links to complementary research elsewhere and will be interested to know of any published or publicly accessible material that might be linked to the entries of individual pubs. Please contact us, if you have any suggestions for links.
The authors would like to acknowledge the advice and support that has been provided by Dr Simon Fowler of the Pub History Society. Hosting of this site is provided by Steve Coom and Carin Lindberg of Razor Solutions.
About the Authors:
Barry, a war baby, grew up in Oadby, having “successfully” failed to pass the 11 plus, he was educated at Gartree school.
He aspired to become a chef but a Youth Employment Officer sent him to learn the drinks trade at Pollards Brewery in Leicester, where he attained the lofty position of a Lorry Driver’s mate. Visiting the pubs in and around Leicester during the late 1950s gave him an insight into another world and a chance to meet many of Leicester’s characters, which resulted in a lifetime’s interest in social and local history.
Barry Lount has written history books concerning Oadby alehouses, highwayman George Davenport, and James Hawker, a Victorian Poacher. A licensee for most of his working life, he founded the Steamin Billy Brewing Company which has several public houses in and around Leicester.
He married Liz in his teens and they have two daughters and two grandchildren. A proud Leicester lad who supports Leicester city, the Tigers and the Leicestershire cricket team.
Hailing from Luton, Bedfordshire, but now residing in Cornwall, Dr. Stephen Bunker was born in 1961 and works with the Open University as well as Oxford Open Learning. His Ph. D. thesis, Strawopolis, was published in 1999 and has authored other publications, including The Spy Capital of Bedfordshire (2007). Married, with a son and a daughter.
Photo: Dr. Stephen Bunker and Barry Lount in The Cow and Plough, Leicester, 2017
Acknowledgements
Prof. Robert Colls was an enormous inspiration to me. A regular at the Dog and Gun, and later at the Cow and Plough, Robert introduced me to social history in its many forms and encouraged me to begin researching in his own right.
Idea of online pub gazetteer or directory in street form by OU historian Dr. Stephen Bunker, with input from Chris Jinks, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of Leicester pubs.
Photographs mainly by myself.
Pre 1980s see acknowledgements, but special mention to Dennis Calow and Chris Jinks who are indexing the thousands of slides and negatives (some of which are copied here) they were deposited to me from the estate of Jack Graves of Oadby, most untitled, including many street scenes of Leicester 1960s-70s, this ongoing painstaking indexing will eventually be deposited with the appropriate local history records.
by B.L.
The Pub History Project – Leicester has a podcast. Please see link below, subscribe and have a listen!
In the 1960s, I sometimes visited a distant relation, one of the most gentle and kind people I have ever met, Annie Jackson, née Bird. Her mother was Rebecca Walker of Sharnford. Annie passed away in 1977. She was in a home in Evington by then. I know she told me that she was born at Catthorpe.
Her husband, Harry Jackson, had once been the publican of the Builders Arms, in Leicester. She never spoke about it, but my Grandma said that he had taken to drinking and ruined the business. He died quite young and she was left without a penny and probably emotionally scarred too.They never had children.
I notice a reference on the internet that in 1899 “Walt Edw Bird/Beer Retailer/../../Wrights Directory” was responsible for the Builders Arms. I presume this must have been her father and that she and her husband took the business over from him.
I don’t see any photographs of the Builders Arms on-line.
what’s the next project?
according to the 1871 census the ‘Wolfe and Lamb” at 36 Upper Charles Street was known as the ‘Wolfe and Saints’ – licensee Shadrach Wilson, taken over and renamed (?) by his widow Sarah (after his death in 1879). She married Henry Smith in 1881 – the license was then in his name for a minute, before passing along to Henry George and then Harry Wilson, all in 1881. Thanks for creating such a great resource!
Thanks Sue for your informative comments, we will add them to the Wolfe and Lamb page, its just the sort of feedback we are looking for, thanks again for your interest.
Regards Barry
Hi Barry, having a spring clean we came across a brass tray that my mother had owned, it is inscribed VANN’S Mineral Waters Crafton Street, Leicester.
We did a bit of research and it seems the Vanns owned the Prince Of Wales in Crafton Street but as neither my Mother or Father were to be found in the local pubs we wondered how they came to own it.
My mothers brother however is believed to run the Rutland in Aylestone on the corner with Wigston Lane and perhaps that was a route for the tray. Looking on the internet the Rutland closed and is now a health centre or similar.
My Uncles name was Frank Varley and I guess we are talking of the around the 1940’s, we wondered if you could shed a little light on either The Rutland Hotel or the Vanns?
Hello Keith, it seem a bit of a conundrum with the Vanns, Richard & Eliz Vann ran the Talbot in Denman St before moving to the Prince of Wales 2 Crafton Stc1881. Richard died 1887 aged 44, Eliz (now widowed) carried on running the pub until c1905. The Richard Vann that had the mineral water company at 30 Crafton St (next door to the Bakers Arms) was listed in 1890 aged 26, so doubtful if any connection.
What is interesting is that by the end of the 1890s Vanns mineral waters had become Lovatt Brothers, later Lovatt soft drinks who were still going into the 1970s, a major Soft Drinks Co in Leicester.
It looks as though your plate could be pretty rare as Vanns mineral waters was not there long, and it seems had no connection with Prince of Wales.
As far as your query on Rutland, I have yet to research much on the pub.
Hope that is of some help.
Cheers Barry