Hartwrights behind Bars

HEREFORDSHIRE

 Bob Hartwright (1901 – 1964) and Ivy Lizzie Hartwright nee Royall (1900 – 1975)

Based on conversations between John Royall Hartwright and Jacquie

The Rose and Lion, Bromyard, Herefordshire – A traditional family pub

From document’s in John’s possession we know that on 1^st May 1918  the licence for the pub in New Road Bromyard was transferred from John Turbill to George Royall and his wife Eliza. George had been born in Cromer, Norfolk and had been working first as a groom at Tedstone Court and later as a coachman between Bromyard and Worcester, before moving into the Rose and Lion. Their daughter Ivy married Henry Ronald “Bob” Hartwright and thus a family association began which was to continue until 1st May 1975.

 George’s licence authorised him to sell beer and cider and when Bob took over in 1932 wine had been added to the list. The owners were Harpers Hitchmans Ltd of Lowesmoor Worcester  and they were the sole providers all wines, spirits beer, porter cider and aerated waters. Bob’s rent was £20 a year the same as his father-in-law’s had been in 1918. This is not surprising as the country was in the throes of “The Depression” and making enough to live on in the early days was hard, especially as by 1937 Bob and Ivy’s four children had been born at the Rose and Lion - Dulcie, Diana, Daphne and John. The previous year the pub had it’s first electric lighting – two fifty watt lamps!

 John’s Reminiscences about life as a young boy during World War II are  here.

 In 1939 the pub was registered as an eating establishment.  Cider was 4d a pint, and on a cold night a hot poker was dipped into the glass to warm it up. Bob was called up in September 1942 and the licence passed to Ivy whilst her husband was in the Royal Army Medical Corps. During the War their eldest daughter Dulcie stayed at home and helped Ivy to  bring up the children and look after the pub.

 The garden at the pub, was much admired, not least by elephants.  The  King’s Arms yard was temporary home to the elephants of the Chapman Circus  during the War.  When they broke out – which they did on more than one occasion - they quickly made their way to Rose and Lion’s garden and, leaning over the wall took their pick of the vegetables  They sometimes leaned a little too hard and demolished the wall along with the vegetables!

 The war ended in 1945 and Bob was demobbed in 1946 returning to the Rose and Lion as licensee.

 Bob grew vegetables and kept a pig to  help feed the family. Nothing was wasted – except as they say - the pig’s whistle. Brawn was made from the cooked meat from  the head of the pig which was pressed in special brawn tin.  Pig’s trotter and the gelatine formed from the fatty pig meat was also an essential ingredient of another popular dish - rook pie.  Bob would go off and shoot young rooks on about 11^th May,  when they were  just leaving the nest and their flesh was at its most tender  The rook’s breast and leg meat was cooked along with the trotter and fat, the bones and the trotter removed and a pastry top added and cooked. Some of the rook pie was eaten hot by the family and the rest put in the cellar to keep cool. The gelatine from the pork combined with the rook meat to make a delicious cold pie, which was served in the bar on the following Thursday.

 Bob got to know a lot of local farmers after the War when he was agent for “Gobsall Brown Sacks”, a company that hired sacks out to farmers to store their grain prior to sale.  He used to carefully shake out the returned empty sacks and feed the chickens on the resulting grain. In the summer surplus eggs were put in waterglass and stored in the cellar at the Rose and Lion along with the sides of bacon, hams and crates of beer.

 With farming in his blood, Bob also took on a small holding of about 20 acres with sheep and cattle and his daughter Diana helped with the milking. She later went on to study dairying at Studley College.

 On one occasion the Wyre Forest Beagles held their meet at the Rose and Lion. Pictured here with Bob Hartwright who is sixth from right are on his right - his cousin Bill (with moustache) on Bill’s right Bob’s brother Tom and to their right cousin Ted.

The Meet

Trade at the Rose and Lion began to pick up from the 1950’s onwards and by then Hunt Edmunds & Co Ltd of Banbury were the brewers.  The rent had increased by 1959 to £52 p.a. and pub outings had recommenced and were extremely popular.  Bob would hire a coach and the regulars would pay to go off for a ride round the Bromyard area stopping at the appropriate time to whet their whistles from one of the stoneware flagons.

 Each stop provided an opportunity for a “win”, as numbers were chalked on the coach’s wheel and the regular whose number was at the bottom of the wheel won a prize.

 The annual beginning of hop-picking in the autumn saw an influx of gypsies into the area.  John remembers a caravan train of brightly coloured horse-drawn caravans lined up in New Road prior to going on to Bishop’s Frome.  On Saturdays the gypsies used to come into Bromyard to replenish their stores and after a little refreshment, the men often used to be seen racing their horses up New Road. Of course there was virtually no traffic in those days.

 Bob was also a Special Constable and a keen gardener.  The latter was his real love and there is now a Bob Hartwright Cup awarded annually by the Bromyard and District Gardening Club.  Initially he used to enter local shows and then judged them along with Godfrey Baseley his brother-in-law.  John remembers Godfrey talking in the bar of the Rose and Lion asking what people would like to hear on a new wireless programme about the life in the country.  Later Godfrey was editor of the new programme  “The Archers”, which is still running today after 50 years. At least one story-line was based on a family incident, when a nisgull pig (the runt of the litter) was reared by Bob’s three sisters in their bungalow in the Burying Lane, Bromyard.

 In 1961 the rent of the Rose and Lion rose to £80 p.a. and the bar was refurbished by the brewery Hunt Edmund and two tables with ebonised frames and brass ferrels with African walnut tops and two stools with brass foot rails and upholstered rubber seats to tone with Old Glamis “Cawdor” line strip were ordered. (The stools are still there in 2003.) Caravanning became popular and there was a mix of locals and holiday-makers, many from the Birmingham area, crammed into the pub enjoying a sing-song on a Saturday evening.

 When Bob died in 1964 Ivy continued at the Rose and Lion, which had been her home nearly all her life. The pub was still very much part of the family life with Daphne’s children spending time there whilst she was working as a physiotherapist at the hospital. Following Ivy’s death in 1975 the pub licence was transferred.  By coincidence the date was the 1^st May 1975 exactly 57 years after Ivy’s  father had taken over the pub from John Turbill.

 NORTHAMPTONSHIRE

Jack Hartwright 1873 -1965

Mike Streeton recalls that “Jack Hartwright  was to say the least a character. As a young man he was a currier like his father, for a number of years he was landlord at The Blue Bell in Moulton. [The 1901 census shows Jack as a publican with his wife Eugine/Eugenia and their two eldest children Cyril and Frank living in Moulton.] He later owned two farms in that area, one of which in due course, was sold to Moulton Agricultural College.  He used to “puppy walk” young hounds for the Pytchley Hunt and won two prizes for it. One of which was a silver teapot, which Mike recalls seeing Jack give to his grand daughter. Jack was known as a great raconteur and it is said that he would keep telling the stories, as long as someone paid for the beer. In 1965, at the age of 91 Jack died, probably as he would have wished, one evening in The Shoulder of Lamb, his local pub.”

Mike also mentions that Jack’s sister, Sarah Anne Hartwright and her husband George Robinson kept “The Bantam Cock” in Wellingborough.  The pub has been knocked down and the site used as a carpark. Another of Jack’s sisters Mary Elizabeth “Lizzie” who married a man called Wilde, is believed to have lived for a while in Canada where she too ran a drinking establishment.

BERKSHIRE

I mentioned Fred and Elsie Hartwright on page 8 of “The Hartwrights”. Sometime before the World War I Fred became the landlord of the Lion Inn, Buscot.  In 1916 he was conscripted into the Army and had to leave his pregnant wife Elsie May Boucher to cope with the pub, smallholding and a daughter who had been born in 1915. This Elsie did until he was demobbed in 1919. Fred’s family which now included a son, Jack, took up an opportunity to move to a farm of their own where Fred and Elsie built up a successful dairy business as well having some arable land. This venture was  expanded in the 1930s.

 OXFORDSHIRE

According to the obituary for Jane Payne nee Hartwright (1826 – 1905), her late husband William had been a miller of Munswell Mill Wallingford  He later became the owner of the Shillingford Brewery in Oxfordshire. This needs further investigation. Can anyone help?

STAFFORDSHIRE

1818 Thomas Hartwright – Appears in an old trade directory on the genuki website at The White Hart, High Street, Kinfair (Kinver), which is now called Ye Olde White Harte  I am checking, but believe this to be Thomas Hartwright who came from Oddingley in Worcestershire and died in Birmingham.

Ye Olde White Harte Hotel, Kinver, 2003

 FROM THE ARCHIVES

 WORCESTERSHIRE

William Hartwright 1789-1856 eldest son of George and Abigail Hartwright of Timberdine, St Peter’s, Worcester

William died nearly 30 years later and the following Worcester pubs were mentioned in his will:-

The Boat, Lowesmoor; The Dark Angel later called The Globe, [now known as The Farriers Arms in Fish Street] The Green Dragon, Newport Street; The Ten Bells, Dolday (also known as The Don Cossac).

William’s descendants continued as leaseholders or owners of public houses inherited from Richard Ford, until the last pub - The Farrier’s Arms in Fish Street, Worcester - was sold by his grandson the Reverend William Richard Hartwright in 1925. The Farrier’s Arms (formerly The Globe) is the only pub mentioned in William’s will that still exists today.

The Farrier’s Arms, Fish Street Worcester

George Hartwright, (1791-1859) William’s younger brother was another pub licensee. He appears to have come to the occupation late in life.  I have records of a George Hartwright farming at Kempsey as tenant of Lord Viscount Cocks and the Reverend James Somers in the 1830’s this could be George or his father who was in his eighties by then.  In any event when George Hartwright (b. 1791) of the Red Lion, Sidbury Worcester died, he had moved to Little Angel Street and was an Eating House keeper, who owned a small piece of land and “two messuages” in Powick parish which is just, outside Worcester.

Here is an extract from the Quarter Sessions Records:-

St Peter’s The Red Lion, Sidbury, Worcester, licence transferred from George Day to George Hartwright.

31 August 1854

Be it remembered that at the General Annual Licensing Meeting of Her Majesty’s Justices of the Peace for the City of Worcester held at the Guildhall in the said City on Thursday the 31^st day of August 1854

Present H Clifton, William Lewis Esq

Thomas Chalk, Richard Padmore Esq

The Victuallers whose names are hereunder written had licences granted unto them for the year commencing 10^th October next.

…….. St Peter the Great

No 12 The Red Lion George Hartwright……….

In the application for licences for 1855 George Hartwright’s name is crossed through and John Wheeler’s name written in pencil. This pub is situated in Sidbury on the corner of Wylds Lane with Sidbury and after many years waiting for redevelopment it is now, in 2003,  a Thai restaurant.