LOADSANEWS this month:

SUN, LEINTWARDINE, HEREFS.
The first and truly sad information in this bulletin is reported by Wayne Smith last week:
‘It is with extreme sadness that we announce the death of Ms Flossie Lane, landlady of the Sun Inn, Leintwardine, and perhaps the country’s oldest licensee. She died this afternoon, Saturday 13th June, in Leominster Hospital, Herefordshire, where she had been convalescing since taking ill on Good Friday. The pub will hold an evening of remembrance on Sunday 14th at 8pm after which it will be closed until further notice.’
[Clearly this e-bulletin will arrive too late for recipients to attend and perhaps it should have been a largely local event anyway. But RIP, Flossie. Let us hope your precious pub will somehow live on after you as a memorial].

NEXT UP, a request from me doing a bit of market research. In the new-style CAMRA What’s Brewing/Beer paper/magazine heritage pubs get a quarterly article in Beer, and these articles have evolved, more by accident than design, into general ones with mentions of several of pubs in an area. The formula in the old Beer was to focus in some depth on one NI pub with a fair degree of rotation round the country month by month. I’d really appreciate knowing your reaction (could be you haven’t got one!) and would ask you to simply stick a yes by one of the following and do an email reply message to me: do add a comment if you so wish:

1. I preferred the old-style articles focussing on a single pub 2. I prefer the new-style articles focussing on a number of pubs 3. Makes no difference as far as I’m concerned.
4. Haven’t noticed  - all the same to me!
Any additional comments:



CHANGES TO THE NI
The following were agreed at the CAMRA Pub Heritage Group meeting in Sheffield last Saturday, 13 June:
ADDITIONS TO PART ONE:
1. Waverley Arms, 121 Abbotsbury Rd, Weymouth, DT4 0JX. 01305 787917. 
Almost intact biggish interwar pub. But, beware, no real ale and perhaps not the place to place your aged mum for a birthday treat.
2. Carpenters Arms, Coldred, Kent  (N of Dover). A 1960s time-warp of an interior. 2 rooms. 3 Gadds ales on when I visited. Hours 11-2.30 and from 6.
3. Stag Inn, Balls Cross, Petworth, W. Sussex GU 28 9JP. 01403 820241. 
Good multi-room village pub
ADDITIONS TO PART TWO
1. Red Lion, 55 High Street, Southampton SO14 2NS. For minstrels’ galleries.
2. Fairview Inn, 16 Glebelands, Headington, Oxford, OX3 7EN. 01865 763448. For a stunning interwar lounge.
3. Bush Inn, 4 Bull Ring, St Johns, Worcester WR2 5AD. 01905 421086. 
c.1900 fittings and rooms.
TRANSFER TO PART TWO
Harrington Arms, Gawsworth , Ches. Following changes not intact enough for Part One.
DELETIONS.
1. Royal Hill, Edgerley, Shropshire. Changes. Still parts left. V. foody BTW.
2. Grapes, Stranraer, Dumfries & Galloway. Amalgamation of rear rooms.
A future casualty will no doubt be the Stumble Inn, Sheffield which appears to be being gutted (will need to be ratified).


SAMSON & LION, BORDESLEY GREEN, BIRMINGHAM Mick Slaughter reports this Enterprise Inns pub closed a few of weeks ago and with the virtual removal of the pub name I am concerned it may have been PEACOCK, RUGBY Mick also reports this pub has been closed for some months and that there are said to be plans to converted it to non-pub use.

‘NEW’ BOOK ON PUBS
Most highly recommended is a reprint of ‘Back to the Local’ which, for me, is the most delightful and evocative book ever written on the English pub. It came out in 1949 in the austere post-war period and writer Maurice Gorham and his artist fellow-drinker Edward Ardizzone set down their impressions of London pubs of the day. You could still get mild, you could still drink in multi-room pubs, you still had jug and bottle departments, and snob screens were still used. It’s a wonderful cover-to-cover read and the line drawings are a joy. (If you have my/Jane Jephcote’s very different ‘London Heritage Pubs’ book you can read more about this classic on p. 148.) Full price £12 (126 pages) but available discounted – I suggest you google ‘back to the local gorham’ and this will produce the link to the relevant bit of the F&F website.
This link will also lead you to F&F’s reprint of another great pub classic ‘The Pub and the People’ of 1943, a study by Mass Observation which looks at pubs, people and drink in coyly named ‘Worktown’ (known to us as Bolton).

Geoff