Earlier this week, we posted a gallery of photographs of pubs with tiled frontages, prompting some commenters to leave links to Google Street View pointing out some corkers we’d missed.
That gave us an idea: we’ve dusted down our copy of Warren Knock & Conal Gregory’s 1975 paperback pub guide Beers of Britain and retraced part of one of their routes using Google’s mapping service. Tapping into Boak’s family roots, we’ve decided to go for East Anglia.
“Norfolk is synonymous with the Broads, and a good starting point is Geldeston… The Wherry [is] an early 18th-century-pub, with a tearoom serving lunches and dinners, in addition to the excellent Adnams ale. Gaily-painted ornaments made from sea-shells… are sold here.”
“Nearby Norwich has a Tollemache pub in the Wild Man in Bedford Street, a city where it is otherwise difficult to enjoy traditional draught beer.”
“Towards the coast just west of the market town of Aylsham lies the chance of a good Greene King pint at the Buckinghamshire Arms, only a stone’s throw from the magnificent Blickling Hall. Adnams is also often available…”
“Other Adnams’ beers may be enjoyed west of Sheringham at The Maltings, in the village of Weybourne…
…or farther west along the coast on the A149 at Blakeney’s The Manor.”
“Continuing west, the village of Burnham Thorpe boats the birthplace of Nelson and the appropriately named Greene King house Lord Nelson. Although the vicarage where Nelson was born no longer exists, this inn still boasts the room where the most famous of English seamen gave a dinner for the villagers before he took command of the Agamemnon in 1793. The cask beer is drawn by gravity.”
We were rather pleasantly surprised to find that, nearly 40 years on, all of those pubs still exist and are still trading as licensed premises. We also think we’ve picked up a touch of sunburn. Ah, summer…
2 replies on “Virtual Pub Crawl: East Anglia, 1975”
Excellent! I believe Conal Gregory is very much with us and am hopeful he is still interested in beer. His book with Warren Knock was an important milestone on the route to permanently ensuring traditional beer in England. Even modern U.S.-style keg beer owes a debt to them in that its full-malt and well-hopped taste recall some of the best qualities of good cask ale.
Gary
Do try and pop into the Dewdrop in Cambridge while you’re at it, nice drop of Tolly, old school landlady (now the Cambridge Blue) and a few minutes away spare some time for the CAMRA-owned Salisbury (cheating a little, this was late 1970s, we used to hold our Mountaineering club meetings in the Salisbury on Wednesday afternoons, nice pies, I drank Budvar).