Ding! Ding! Move Along the Bus, Please! #14
- Stewart
- 12 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Today, as I start to type this, the calendar in the corner of my laptop screen is telling me that it is the twenty-eighth of April. St. George's Day! Now, before I get inundated with messages telling me that St. George's Day was five days ago, on the same date as Shakespeare's birthday, let me tell you that you are wrong. All three of you!
Whilst the patron saint of Georgia, England and, according to Simon Jeffery, sufferers of syphilis – although I've always understood that that was St. Denis's remit – is usually celebrated on the twenty-third day of the month, no saint's day can be celebrated in the week prior to, or after, Easter. This means that, with Easter being so late this year, St. George's day has had to be moved to the Monday after the second Sunday of Easter, and that is today.
Appropriately, to celebrate, we will be visiting Gorleston's George and Dragon which, just like a dragon, doesn't exist. But unlike a dragon, it once did.
We are continuing our virtual bus journey, which started with the Star Hotel on Hall Quay in Great Yarmouth, and whose last stop was at the Star Inn on the corner of Priory Street in Gorleston.
A couple of hundred yards further along High Street from Priory Street, just before reaching School Lane, once stood the George and Dragon. The pub is marked on the Ordnance Survey's town plan of 1883.
Going back half a century further, Pigot's directory of 1830 informs us that John Funny King jnr. was its landlord.
This is the earliest named landlord that I've managed to unearth, but the pub was seemingly offered for sale, along with an adjoining house, on 31st October 1803 at Crane's Hotel, now also a bygone boozer, across the river in Great Yarmouth.
Funny or not, John King left the pub to become a harbour pilot, and by 1839 his place had been taken by one Samuel Gunn.
Two years later the census captured him there with wife Sarah and daughters Sarah and Mary...
...and he was still in residence in 1845.
By 1851 his place at the George and Dragon had been taken by Daniel Maryson, who'd been running the Prince of Wales in Charlotte – now Howard – Street in Yarmouth.
If you look closely you can see that Samuel and Sarah Gunn hadn't moved far. It appears that they could very well have been living next door.
When Daniel died in 1858, his widow Elizabeth continued in the George and Dragon, aided by daughters Susannah and Sarah...
...but by 1868 an Abel Wightman was briefly the licensee before moving on to run a number of different pubs in Yarmouth. He was shortly followed by Edward Cox.
If we turn the page in the enumerator's book, we find...
...that Elizabeth was still living there. Daughter Sarah had married Edward Cox in 1862. We can also see that there is a Susannah Wightman in residence on census day. Yes, 1862 was a busy year for mother of the bride Elizabeth, as daughter Susannah had married the aforementioned Abel Wightman that year as well. In 1871, Abel was running the Greyhound, which we met in this earlier post.
Ten years later, Edward and Sarah were still in The George and Dragon, and so was Elizabeth...
...but by the time of the next census Edward had retired and moved to Filby with Sarah. Elizabeth went too and kept them company until she died in 1897, aged 98.
If the Coxes were no longer there in 1891, Ralph and Ellen Hood and their family were.
They'd been there the previous year, by which time the pub had been given the street number of 186 ...
...and they were still there at the time of the next headcount...
...although less than six months later Ralph found himself in Gorleston's cemetery. Ellen continued with the pub for a couple of years before moving to Beccles Road, and then remarrying, in 1903.
The George and Dragon continued on until 1926 when its licence was transferred to the newly-built Kevill Arms on Church Road.
What became of this Lacon's house after it stopped serving pints? A local journalist, under the nom-de plume of Peggotty, wrote a piece in a pre-war edition of the Eastern Evening News, reminiscing about Gorleston's High Street. Here is a brief extract.
The street itself is full of memories. Every vestige has disappeared of the Augustine Priory that formerly stood on the west side. A certain wall on the other side always makes me think of it and wonder whether, possibly, some of the stones of that once-famous building have not found their way into its construction. Last year, was not a holy water stoup discovered bricked up in a nearby domain, and did it not probably come from the religious house? There is also Box-iron Corner, so named from the cottage opposite the Old Vicarage that tapers off, just the shape.
Somewhat further along, near the Mission, is an iron gate leading to what was a garden. The gate is said to have come from the fort that was on the denes near the harbour's mouth. In those same grounds, part of which has become a pickling plot, stood the Farthing Folly, a two-storeyed house for the erection of which its owner was said to have saved his farthings. Demolished is the ancient George and Dragon; its space fulfils the modern need for a parking ground.
That need for parking still exists today.
Whilst the George and Dragon had disappeared well before I ever got on a bus, the next stop on this virtual bus ride will see us alight at a boozer that I did once go in. And once is the appropriate word.
The Ordnance Survey map extract is copyright and has been reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland under the terms of this CC BY licence.
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