Heart and Hand and Heart in Hand.
- Stewart
- Apr 1
- 6 min read
Girls of fifteen
Sexually knowing
The ushers are sniffing
Eau-de-cologning
The seats are seductive
Celibate sitting
Pretty girls digging
Prettier women.
These lines always spring to mind when I wake to see the clock displaying 5:15, but I very much doubt that Jimmy, the main protagonist in The Who's Quadrophenia, would've been "out of my brain on the 5:15" at this time of the day.
With the alarm set for 5:30 it wasn't worth turning over and grabbing a few more z's, so I got up and made the coffee. Not for me, you understand. I was only permitted to have water, and only until 6:30, but there was no way that I was going to let Mrs. Bygone Boozer drive me to the hospital until she'd consumed her requisite 200mg of morning caffeine.
Yes, the time had finally arrived when an attempt would be made to straighten the fingers on my right hand sufficiently to enable me to hold a pint glass once again. That probably wasn't the criterion of success that my consultant had in his head, but this Dupuytren's contracture was certainly beginning to interfere with everyday life and needed sorting.
Arriving on the ward the pre-flight checks were soon underway. Temperature, blood pressure, medical history...
The anaesthetist didn't seem too concerned about the runs of ectopic ventricular beats...
...but a little later, when the alarm went off on the machine, and with my pulse rate showing as forty-four beats per minute, she did enquire if that was normal for me. I informed her that a few years go, when I was at my fittest, it might even have been in the thirties. Then it was on with the gown and time to shuffle along, in my slippers, to Operating Theatre 8.
Ninety minutes after I recall finishing my conversation about cycle racing with the anaesthetist I heard my name. Slowly I left the world in which I was playing rugby on an orange pitch pursued by a teal-coloured dragon – a scene which wouldn't be out of place on a can of Beavertown's latest concoction – and re-entered the real one. General anaesthetics can certainly exaggerate the hypnopompic experience!
My right hand is now like this...
...so don't expect too much detail in this post. Typing with one finger is sloooow. SETTING CAPS LOCK TO START A SENTEnce and forgetting to unset it is frustrating. Playing with loads of images of directory pages – rotating, cropping, adjusting – is just too much. I mean, it took me just under twenty minutes to get and process the image from Mr Google that you'll find below, so the details in this post are going to be limited.
With the above introduction, the subject of this post just had to feature a hand and a heart, and there were a number of choices. The Hand and Heart in Coventry and the Brighton's Heart and Hand were both possibilities but I've plumped for the Heart in Hand in Nuneaton as there is a very tenuous link with the previous post in that, on my train journeys between Great Yarmouth and Bangor, I used to have to change at Nuneaton and would've stood a couple of hundred yards from where it was, if it hadn't been demolished fifteen years earlier.
Standing on the corner of Wheat Street and Vicarage Street...
...the Heart in Hand was in operation in 1891 when Thomas Ratcliffe was in residence.
This is the earliest reference to the place that I have found. Jumping forward almost half a century and James Paice was the landlord listed in Kelly's 1936 directory. Is this him posing outside his pub?
It seems that Mr. Paice may not have been universally popular. On the Nuneaton History website there is a downloadable description (transcribed by Alice Gore) of one Ernie Pittam's memories of the Heart in Hand, as well as the Black Horse opposite, in the 1920s and '30s. Here are Ernie's memories of the former.
The outstanding surprise miracle call it what you may:
At the time of World War 2 I was living at 56 Wheat Street. During the major air raid on the town (40 something) I along with the rest of the family were bombed out and lived for 8 months in Oaston Road. The front of the house was blown in and the entire front half of the house had to be re-built.
The Black Horse was just 2 doors away. The Heart in Hand was almost opposite (within 20 yards). Both pubs, damage amounted to several window replacements. No structural damage involved, however Dad and I did get a free pint from both landlords.
HEART IN HAND (THE HEART) 1925
I feel confident the landlord at this time was a Mr Harris, a bit stodgy and overweight but still the friendly publican of those days. Not much variety of drinks. Main seller was Mild Ale at 2d a pint. Old Ale at 3d a pint. Stout (later replaced by Guinness) at 3d a pint. A selection of Nuts and Raisins and Smiths Crisps. No shorts. Clientele: Railway Workers, Goods Train Drivers, Firemen, Porters and Cleaners from the sheds at the top of Wheat Street. Regulars were residents of lower Wheat Street, Back Street and Vicarage Street. Dominoes was the main interest (Darts did not come in until 1931/2). A Sick and Divi club was run annually, members paid a few pence each week and benefitted by a few shillings when incapacitated from work and remaining funds were shared out just prior to Christmas each year. This was organised by volunteer regulars, anyone being sick for a few weeks was looked upon very unfavourably by other weekly payers. Sales from the Outdoor Dept are interesting. If young children brought a bottle for filling with Mild or Bitter had a paper sealing strip over the cork to prevent a guzzle before getting back home. I do believe the law changed later banning young persons purchasing alcoholic drinks before a certain age. Saturday nights usually finished up with a sing song around the lamp post at the front of the pub. It was only a small pub with a cramped bar when the drinkers gathered on popular evenings. However there was a tiny Smoke Room which seldom had many customers. When Mr Harris retired a Mr Plaice took the reins with little success. Not a friendly host who’s manner reduced the number of regulars but he didn’t stay for long. He was replaced by Albert Mellor an ex-miner. He was an instant success because most of the then regulars were miners. He was soon selling short drinks, putting up a dartboard, introduced card games, dominoes and a larger variety of brews of beer. His biggest drawback was the size of the bar. He had an extension built at the rear of the premises which provided living quarters for him and family. The regulars were still drawn from the Railway workers and miners and many from other parts of town. During World War 2 beer was rationed and on the day the beer arrived it was almost impossible to get near the bar. Albert encouraged the members of a local soccer team. After a while the team adopted the name of Hearts Athletic. He was also responsible for doing away with the laying of sawdust on the bar floor and disposing of the unhygienic cast iron spittoons which were also filled with sawdust. He built a small gymnasium at the rear of the premises too and encouraged quite a few youngsters to take up amateur boxing along with his son young Albert. Albert had a few contests of a minor capacity but never really hit the headlines. The pub was taken over by Fred Wildebore who had taken over Marlowe’s shop previously. Fred was wed to my mother’s cousin (this is a very interesting story too which I will have to let you have sometime). He remained mine host until the pubs closure (??).
In the early days not many women frequented the pub. In fact it was looked upon as womanly degrading but with the coming of World War 2 attitudes changed into the present day women freedom.
What the Luftwaffe didn't manage to achieve, post-war planning and redevelopment did. The Heart in Hand and the Black Horse were demolished in 1959 to allow for the widening of Vicarage Street, now the A444. Traffic now drives through the Heart in Hand.
And speaking of hands, the cast is now off. Cycling and driving are also off as, still, is picking up a pint glass. But that day does seem to be getting closer.
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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