Origins of Pub Names

A few will be aware I have been known to speak on various subjects over the years. Fundamentally these all revolve around my favourite subject of etymology. Have always enjoyed bringing this fascinating subject to others. It’s not for me to say whether the audiences have, although many have asked me to return.

Thought it might be worthwhile sharing a snippet or two from these etymological presentations, continuing with Origins of Pub Names

I once worked at a pub called the Ale Stake. It had the story of the origin of the name on the wall, saying it recalled Saxon to Medieval times, when travelers were alerted to a home brew available nearby with a tree where the lower branches had been removed and a sheaf of barley tied at eye level.

Pub names generally fall into a handful of categories: Heraldic, such as the Red lion; Royalist, the Royal Oak being one; the church, such as the Cross Keys; the product, the Three Tuns; and welcoming and humorous, such as the Dew Drop Inn.

If you think you know someone who would like to hear me speak on this subject, drop me a line.

Widowed in the Orchard (Twice!)

Thomas Frederick Young died on December 27th 1906 aged 44 years. A native of Lichfield, where his mother and siblings still lived, he had lived for a number of years at the Eagle Inn, Pitchcombe, near Stroud. On his marriage to the daughter of the former owner in 1895 he had taken over as landlord. moving to Gloucestershire.

With snow still lying on the Cotswold Hills, Thomas Young collected his double-barrelled shotgun and, as the clock struck one, told his wife not to hold dinner for him should he return home late. Next time she saw him was three hours later when she went out to feed the pigs. A glance in the direction of the adjacent orchard and she spotted her husband lying by the hedge. Returning to the pub she asked a Mr White, a military man with medical training, to investigate. He discovered the landlord lying face down in the orchard, on top of the shotgun which had been discharged at point-blank range into the owner's bowels. Clearly he had been dead for some time.

When the police arrived he traced the footsteps in the still-lying snow. These showed he had walked to a neighbour's property and back to the orchard, presumably looking for game, and something he would often do and share any rabbits with the neighbour for Thomas Young was known as the very best of marksmen. The inquest heard the evidence and came to the conclusion the man had placed the gun on the orchard side of the fence before climbing over. A wise precaution but a fatal one for as he grabbed the barrel of the gun and lifted it, twigs of the hedge caught on the trigger and fired the gun.

Back in Lichfield the news was met with dismay for Thomas Young and his family were well liked in the city. Many will have remembered the man who had worked as butler and gamekeeper for Mr. J. C. Little when in Lichfield a decade earlier. With his body interred in Gloucestershire, a memorial service was held in the place of his birth.

It was here that rumours began to circulate and questions asked. It seems the widow Young had been married before. Her first husband, also landlord of the Eagle Inn, had also meant an untimely end. Furthermore this had also been the result of a gunshot wound and also in the orchard adjacent to the inn. Any suggestion of foul play was dismissed as mere coincidence, but still many questioned how the wife had failed to hear the gun going off when his body was discovered just 75 yards from their home.

The Mail Train

Postman William Windridge lived in Dean's Croft, Lichfield with his uncle. On the last day of 1894 he had not been to work due to illness but the next morning had left home at 4:50am, telling his uncle he was going for a walk.

At 10:30am that morning his Uncle William learned how a postman had been killed on the line and, not having seen his nephew for some hours, went along to see find his worst fears realised. Identified by the tobacco pouch he had seen him fill that very morning, for the mutilated remains were hardly recognisable. His skull shattered leaving the contents scattered along the line, one leg severed and missing. His remaining shoe, hat and marks on the body had also confirmed that New Years Day 1895 was the last for 27-year-old Postman Windridge.

At the subsequent inquest further details were revealed. While it had been his job to bring the mail bags to Lichfield Trent Valley Station, he had been suspended some six weeks earlier after the station master found him walking unsteadily and deemed him to have been at risk. While his uncle maintained this was due to illness, the landlord of the Blue Bell Inn, one John Oakley, stated he had been drinking heavily at his establishment the previous day. Indeed he had walked him home that day as he had been the worse for drink and had even been forced to wrestle him into bed and force him to stay there to sleep.

A thorough search did not reveal any blood an any of the engines to have passed through the station that morning. Nor did they ever find the missing limb anywhere near where the impact occurred, at the level crossing here used solely by the farm and not by the public in general.

The coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death but strongly suspected this may well have been suicide.

Heraldry in Pub Names

When preparing my books on the origins of place names I like to include a selection of pub names. Defining such is a different way of looking at the history of place. Many landowners will have had an interest in the local pub and for their support, or perhaps that should be to earn that support, saw the family name used for the name of the pub.

As that name would have made no sense to the largely illiterate locals the sign used their coat of arms, or perhaps a portion of it, which would have been instantly understood. Even today we use imagery to represent the written language – in signs for public transport, in logos used by brands and companies, and in the icons on screens of our phones and computers. Quite quickly it became commonplace for the term ‘Arms’ to be used even when heraldry was not behind the name. Hence we see Arms used with the place name, the message showing the location of the premises and effectively using ‘Arms’ as a synonym for ‘pub’.

Over the years the lords of the manor move on and their name does have a tendency to disappear from the name, particularly in the larger towns and cities. Yet heraldry still plays a part and while the full arms mean a complex and thus expensive sign, to take a particular part of the image and use that as the name retains the link to the family while producing a new name. This imagery, as legible for our ancestors as the written word is to us, is often misunderstood and does produce some creative explanations.

A good clue to a sign taken from heraldry is the many strangely-coloured animals (both real and imaginary) we see in pub names. Examples include White Lion, Blue Boar, Green Dragon, and the most common of them all, the Red Lion. Another pointer is the inclusion of the number ‘Three’ in the name. It just so happens that three was used in heraldry and is seen in names such as Three Tuns (Worshipful Company of Brewers and Worshipful Company of Vintners), Three Horseshoes (Worshipful Company of Farriers), Three Cups (Worshipful Company of Salters), Three Crowns (Worshipful Company of Drapers), and Three Wheatsheaves (Worshipful Company of Bakers) and many others.

There are even examples of heraldry giving first a pub name and latterly a place name. The most famous being the Elephant and Castle which, while often said to be a corruption of the Infanta de Castile, it actually began as the crest of the Cutlers’ Company. The elephant represents the ivory used to produce the handles of the best knives while the ‘castle’ is actually a howdah on the back of the beast.

If there are any specific pub names you would like to see defined, or any definitions of unusual names you have to offer, I would be delighted to hear from you.

Origins of Pub Names

As this is the season when nearly all of us will be raising a glass or two, and the subject of pub names was raised over luncheon last week – in a pub, of course - I have decided to point out the origin of a selection of pub names. Thus if the beer or wine fails to entertain, you might have something to talk about.

Although it may seem odd, the inn sign pre-dates the first recognisable inns in this country by a significant period of time. Once upon a time every family brewed their own ale. It made sense as the water could rarely be trusted to be safe to drink and the boiling part of the brewing process effectively sterilises the liquid sufficiently to ensure it is safe to drink.

In order to earn a copper or two, some settlements would offer some of the brew to travellers on the road. Such refreshment, perhaps accompanied by a hunk of bread and pottage or similar, brought much-needed revenue to the household. We are not talking about the larger communities where the main road ran straight through the village but more isolated communities.

Yet these services would have to be advertised as any well-worn path was unlikely to run past the front door. Hence to draw attention to the home brew a sheaf of barley would be tied to a prominent tree. The bole of a large tree with its lower branches removed with be noticeable enough. With a sheaf of barley tied at or just above eye level, they would be guaranteed to receive a thirsty guest or two before long. These marked and still-living trees were known as ale stakes and are easy to see as the forerunner of the modern pub sign. This is how the logical order of pub – name – sign was, in reality, quite the reverse.

In later years landlords and owners were quick to realise the sign was the equivalent of advertising hoarding of its day. Just as modern advertisers use humour and eye-catching imagery to give their product any edge over the competition, so early inns employed every trick they could think of to bring in the customers. There was one big difference, however. Today we read the name, yet literacy is a fairly modern development and our forefathers will have had to recognise the image on the sign and be able read the message it contained.

Red Lion - At its peak there were more pubs known as the Red Lion in England than any other. Numbers once exceeded six hundred but in the twenty-first century this has fallen. For such a common name the name has only been seen since the seventeenth century and, rather ironically, the most common pub name in England is representative of the monarchy of Scotland.

It began as a device on the coat of arms of the most powerful man in England in the fourteenth century, John of Gaunt. His vast riches would, in today’s money, be worth in excess of £100 billion, making him one of the twenty wealthiest people in history. His successors went on to become kings of England through lines resulting in Henry IV and Henry VII and, of course, their descendants. While few pub names can be traced to the fourteenth century and directly to John of Gaunt himself, his red lion symbol did come to England through a more circuitous route. Of his fifteen named children, four with Katherine Swynford were later legitimised by royal decree, taking the surname Beaufort. Their descendants thereafter became every ruler in Scotland from 1437 and, following the accession of the House of Stuart in 1603, every monarch of England.

Royal Oak - One of the three most common pub names in England this was unheard of before the middle of the seventeenth century, for it remembers one of the best known narratives in the history of our islands. The oak tree in question is the Boscobel Oak, a large specimen in Shifnal, Shropshire and where Charles II and his aide Colonel Carless hid from noon to nightfall to escape the Parliamentarian soldiers. Following his defeat at the Battle of Worcester in 1651, King Charles was aided by a number of his supporters as he attempted to flee the country. After a number of close shaves he was smuggled to France by members of the Pendrell family disguised as a woodman, complete with a severe haircut and stained face and arms to make it look as if he was used to working outside. Nine years later at the Restoration of the Monarchy the 29th of May, the date of the king's birthday, being chosen as the official date and thereafter was known as Royal Oak Day.

The present tree is not the original, this was destroyed by souvenir hunters in the 17th and 18th centuries who removed pieces of bark and even whole branches. A second tree, from an acorn of the first, known as the Son of the Royal Oak grew until it was badly damaged by a storm in 2000. A third tree was planted as a sapling by Prince Charles in 2001, this had been grown from an acorn taken from the 'Son' and is thus 'the grandson'. Modern-day souvenir hunters can still acquire a piece of the history, for other grandchildren of the Boscobel Oak are on sale here. Buyers receive their small oak along with a certificate of authenticity.

Stewponey – A pub in Staffordshire which should correctly be the Stewponey and Foley Arms, for the family who made their fortune from iron. This pub near Stourbridge earned its first name when a British soldier came to run the pub after seeing action during the Peninsular Wars in Spain.

His military career now over, he brought with him his new wife, a Spanish woman born in Estepona. It was his intention to add the name of her place of birth to the sign but, as none of the locals were fluent Spanish speakers, it acquired the name of Stewponey.

Sun and Slipper – The local at Mamble in Shropshire was first recorded as an inn in 1642, when it was known as the Sun. This device found on the coat of arms of the Blount family. This coaching inn once offered a maintenance service for the coaches, including changing the brake of ‘slipper’ which was soon added to the name. During the twentieth century the name was changed to the Dog and Duck but, after a veritable outcry from patrons, quickly reverted to its original name.

Tame Otter - The river has not only given a name to the town of Tamworth in Staffordshire but also this pub in nearby Hopwas. For a time this was known as the Chequers, although in recent years it has reverted to its original name of the Tame Otter. As expected the sign-painter depicts the animal Lutra lutra, once hunted for its fur and in danger of extinction the European otter is now making a comeback. Yet the engaging creature has not given its name to the pub, this comes from a simple rowing boat. Shallow, blunt-ended and for just one man, this particular vessel is rarely found away from the Trent and its tributaries. It is possible the boat, used by fishermen, was named from the water mammal but there is no evidence to confirm or refute this.

I would welcome any suggestions for themes or subjects, or even specific words to examine the origins, meanings and etymologies. I’d be delighted to hear from you. Merry Christmas!