(Photo credit: whatpub
During my adventures in pubs over the years I’ve met a number of extraordinary people, good and bad, on both sides of the bar.
The next pub on this list is where I encountered one of the most formidable and honestly terrifying characters I’ve ever met in my life.
Jack Terry, a former Household Cavalryman, was a landlord of some repute, and by the turn of the millennium, he was on his fourth wife, and thirtieth year of licensed business - both endeavours he would soon call time on.
You know when people summon episodic memories of where they were during various events of historical importance? I can remember where I was and what I was doing when I first heard about the attacks on the Twin Towers, or received the news that Princess Di had perished in a Parisian underpass, for instance.
Well, thanks to Jack Terry I can also pinpoint the exact time and location of the first time I witnessed the awe-inspiring spectacle of Apocalyptic Human Rage in its purest and most untethered form.
It was in the Gardener’s Arms in Alderton during the latter part of 2001.
This very old and charming, part-thatched 16th century building occupies a prime spot on the main road through the village, on an ancient drover’s route from Hereford to London.
Located about half way between Evesham and Cheltenham, at the foot of the Cotswold escarpment, Alderton is a place you could easily miss but this pub was always busy, and had a fantastic reputation for it’s seafood menu. It also had a reputation for being owned and run by ‘the rudest landlord in the country’ something Jack absolutely leaned into, even going as far as appearing on TV AM to establish this rumour as fact.
Jack Terry’s explosive temper was the stuff of legend, and was usually provoked by trivial infractions or minor oversights. A fairly routine occurrence, these tantrums became a bit of a draw for the crowds, something Jack knowingly exploited. In fact you could pretty much set your watch by an impending eruption, like one of the geysers going off in Yellowstone.
Sometimes though, if conditions were right and the stars aligned, you might witness a storm of such intensity that it would have probably registered on the kind scientific equipment Seismologists set up to track distant earth tremors. I was present for a couple of those ones, and, while I can’t remember what prompted them, I feel that they changed me on a cellular level, like radiation poisoning.
His very put-upon wife Jane gave the impression of pure brittleness, with her permanently moist eyes and jumpy demeanour, and every outburst of Jack’s threatened to be the one that might finally unspool her (I felt extremely sorry for Jane, but I bumped into her in Aldi a few years later, post-divorce. She looked born again and sported a genuine and dazzling smile).
I worked (briefly and only for as long as my nerves would allow) at the Gardener’s, mainly doing service for the weekend shoot party lunches that local banking baron Lord Hambro, of nearby Dixton Manor, would host there. It was an eye-opening glimpse into the lives of the mega wealthy during those few months over the winter of 2001, when the Hambro Estate would fly their top banking execs in from New York on Concord, and throw them and half of the Tory shadow cabinet an extravagant do in the local, after a bracing morning of bird blasting.
The beaters were required to wait outside with the dogs during the after-shoot victuals, so while Lords, Ladies, and banking’s top brass feasted on an embarrassment of culinary riches, they had to make do with some warm soup in a sub-zero car park. Great times!
I’ve had no desire to go back to the Gardener’s, and haven’t been in since those fraught days. Mercifully things seem to have calmed down since old JT called it a day, and more even tempers prevail these days. The pub’s website has revealed a lot of changes in layout and personnel in the intervening years, though the old well in the middle of the bar’s floor remains as a unique feature.
(Photo credit: theseagravearms )
Onwards and upwards, the Seagrave Arms in Weston-Sub-Edge became my local for a short while in the very early noughts, as it happened to be the only pub within walking distance of my allotment at the time.
Licensees Joe and Wendy McDonagh ran a small but warm and welcoming rural pub, that was always stacked to the rafters with local characters.
I think that of all the pubs I’ve ever frequented, this one has to be my all time favourite.
Made up of three rooms and a kitchen, all divided by a central corridor, it had a small footprint for such a busy and always buzzing place. One of the rooms which was allocated as the ‘dining room’ was usually empty, except for Sundays. The most popular thing on the menu other than the Sunday roast was chips, which most people had in the bar with a pint, dispensing with the formality of being seated with cutlery.
Joe and Wendy are now long gone, and the layout has since been rejigged considerably. Recalling the pub’s past as a hotel, the whole place has been converted into a bougie B&B-cum-fine-dining establishment, but back then it was a proper good old fashioned boozer.
The main bar was small but featured an enormous inglenook fireplace which was almost big enough to stand inside, and blazed with an open fire during the chilliest half of the year. On the other side of the bar was the games room, which was home to a jukebox, pool table, dart board, and two grumpy old boys both named Ted, who would drink-drive their way to the pub at around 4pm and bookend the big sash window in what had previously been their beloved tap room.
The two Teds took every opportunity to verbally disapprove of this change of use, and could often be heard grumbling uncharitable epithets in their thick local dialect whenever anyone racked up the pool table, or played a nineties banger.
After a long and stressful day spent sitting in one of the Teds’ cars, parked in a field drinking home-brewed scrumpy and listening to the cricket on the radio, they wanted to come and unwind with pints in the pub the way they always had; in a quiet and joy-free space. They didn’t want to be bothered by flying arrows, fun, or Britney Spears.
The Seagrave, at this time was also where a number of champion Olympians drank. I should clarify that these were Champions largely in the fields of shin-kicking and pole-climbing, which they competed in at the nearby annual Cotswold Olympick Games on Dover’s Hill.
Landlord Joe and fellow shin-kicking champ Stuart, another regular, even made it on to TV’s ‘They Think It’s All Over’ to showcase their sporting talents.
The mildly rundown outside toilets and reasonably frequent presence of biker gangs made this not a pub for the faint hearted but I think I consistently had more fun in this place than I have in any other.
(Photo credit: thedruidsarms )
The Druids Arms in Stanton Drew has an impressive collection of standing stones in its car park and garden. That’s certainly not all it’s got going for it, though.
These Neolithic remnants of an important burial site make up part of a larger group of standing stones, which are considered Britain’s second largest henge monument.
The current licensees have been there since around 2013, the internet reliably informs me. I’ve been a handful of times, though I’ve not been back there for a number of years, despite living right on the doorstep. Allow me to explain why.
Back in dim and distant past of 2012, this pub became the backdrop to one of the most unsettling, almost folk horror experiences that myself and my husband have ever had in a drinking establishment.
I had to check that my other half remembered it because there was something a little hallucinatory about replaying the memory, and I wondered if I’d actually been having a fever dream. We were both nursing a hangover that day, but were otherwise pretty compos mentis.
Like the unfurling of a Twilight Zone plot where the protagonists don’t notice any of the subtle clues they’re given to indicate that they’ve stumbled into a lair of rural weirdness until it’s too late, there we were, merrily minding our own business in the pub’s garden, admiring the stones, planning the rest of the day, and trying not to let the throbbing pain of the previous evening’s over-indulgence ruin an otherwise pleasant afternoon.
We’d both become aware of a low hum, the kind that is usually emitted from an overhead pylon but no such infrastructure was present. We shrugged it off as another symptom of excess.
When we looked around us during a lull in conversation, we noticed that the well populated beer garden, filled with apparently local people, had fallen silent, and all eyes were dispassionately regarding us. Shifting in our seats and instinctively taking more hurried gulps of our pints, we started to take a bit more notice of our surroundings while formulating an exit strategy.
It was at this point that we noticed a pure white, red-eyed albino rabbit which had emerged from a flower border. It sat and watched us with a stillness and purpose that was utterly unnerving. Then another appeared. Then another.
We did a 360 degree sweep of the garden. There were loads, everywhere. All exactly the same - red eyes aglow in the shaded corners of the beer garden. Our car’s tyres barely touched the tarmac all the way home.
I recently looked the place up only to see that it has tremendous reviews, all of which are presumably real and not the result of some sort of Children Of The Stones-esque megalithic mind control. It is a well frequented place, and the locals are described as being ‘very friendly’. Modern day Druids looking for a libation around the solstices are known to pop in to this day. It’s also haunted, naturally. One day I’ll go back but not yet. Not yet.
A few more pubs in this genre worth a mention are The Carpenter’s Arms in Stanton Wick, in the same neighbourhood as the Druid’s. A lovely and often busy pub with absolutely zero sinister undertones.
There are also the two Waldegrave Arms around this neck of the woods; one busy and friendly, if slightly old-fashioned, on the main road through Chewton Mendip. It’s been run by the same family for almost forty years. The other is a few miles away in East Harptree. Each of these establishments is situated on the opposite side of the once sprawling Waldegrave Estate.
(Photo credit: Camra)
The latter pub having a somewhat chequered history, now maintains fairly minimal opening hours after a period of closure. It’s original function was as a meeting place for the clergy in the late medieval era, as it sits facing the local church.
After being listed architecturally and as an Asset of Community Value, local residents began fundraising to buy the pub as a community-owned resource - a goal they managed to achieve - and have since continued to slowly build on their success. A good lesson in the principle of use it or lose it! (Or acquire the funds to purchase it).
I could go on, and I’m sure I’ve overlooked some little smashers but this feels like a good stopping point.
Thank you for reading, see you next time!