This post should be entitled "Ding! Ding! Move Along the Bus, Please.#12" as it's the next in the series which started logging the bygone boozers I could pass on a virtual bus ride from Hall Quay to home. But I've decided to use its alternative title as it's appropriate for the moment and hopefully will remain so for a good while yet.
Some dates just stick in the memory and I'm not referring to the usual birthdays and wedding anniversaries. Regular readers of this drivel, all three of you, will already have met a post featuring the 3rd February 1991 in which Glasgow's Pewter Pot appeared along with one featuring the Crown in Haddiscoe and the 3rd March 1974. The 4th June 2024 is another date that will join the others which just stick in my memory. After all, it's not every day that one receives the diagnosis of an incurable cancer. Treatable, but incurable.
Still, life goes on and so does the virtual bus journey which so far has brought us from Hall Quay, over Haven Bridge, along Southtown Road past the Anson Arms and the Halfway House, to the Greyhound where we turned onto High Road. Along here we've passed the Barking Fishery, the Rising Sun and the Three Tuns. (If you haven't seen the posts about these bygone boozers, a click on their names should take you to the relevant pages.)
Our next port of call on this bygone pub crawl, the Earl Grey, lies across the road and just a few yards further south along the High Street from our last bygone boozer, the Old Commodore. The pair of pubs were marked by the Ordnance Survey on their town Plan published in 1883.
Pigot's directory of 1839 lists a Samuel Tooke as the landlord...
...but the building must've been operating as a pub much earlier than this as it was conveyed to Gorleston's Bell's Brewery in 1792. In fact the building dates from 1716, having been built for local brewer James Killett. It wouldn't have been called the Earl Grey when it passed into the hands of Bell's Brewery as it would be another thirty-eight years before Charles Grey – who seems to be better remembered for the tea, that in reality he probably didn't champion, or his affair with the Duchess of Devonshire, than he is for his reforming acts – became Prime Minister.
Samuel was still in residence when one of Pigot's competitors produced their directory in 1845...
...which was the year that Norwich brewers Steward and Patteson started leasing the building.
By 1851 rope-maker Jeremiah Suffling is mine host.
...and he appeared in Kelly's directory of 1888...
...which was the year that, on September 11th, he found himself being lowered into the ground of Gorleston Cemetery.
His widow, Maria, continued running the Earl Grey...
...until Kelly's recorded a J. Suffling there in 1892.
Hmmmm? Did Jeremiah come back from the dead or was this a piece of lazy research on behalf of the publishers? There is also the possibility that Jeremiah's son, a seaman who was also called Jeremiah, ran the place for a bit. Whatever the true story, a couple of years later the Earl Grey was in the possession of John Durrant...
John was still there at the time of the 1911 census on 2nd April...
...but only just, for he was buried nine days later.
Following John Durrant came Walter Cooper...
...and the Earl's final landlord James Denton.
Brewer Steward and Patteson, who'd bought the freehold in 1865, surrendered the Earl Grey's licence on 18th December 1934, in consideration of one for the newly built Middleton Arms on Middleton Road, and sold building the following year. James Denton moved on to the Suffolk Hotel/Tavern which we will meet a little further down the page. In 1939 the building became the Gorleston branch of local funeral director Arthur Jary & Sons, who are still operating from 43 High Street today. And as the title of this piece states, I don't need their services just yet.
As our virtual pub crawl pauses for a while my real one is just starting. I haven't been to Gorleston since Dad's funeral, ten years ago, but here I am, back in the sin city of the east. For a few years now, four times a year, in the company of an erstwhile workmate, I visit some town or city, sampling some of its hostelries and the brews they have on offer. All previous excursions have been based on places easily accessible by train, but this one was to be a road trip to visit some of the hostelries of my youth. Only some though, for many of my favourites from those days have already sadly featured in these pages. Pubs like the Highlands and the Links Hotel. But we're here, not to just mourn the dead, but to celebrate those which are still living. And I'm still living!
Our first port of call was the Lord Nelson on Trafalgar Road West. Whilst this was the closest pub to my childhood home, it was not my local. That honour went to the aforementioned Highlands. In fact I've only been in it once before. On 4th April 1987. I remember the date as it was Grand National Day and I was also back in Gorleston to attend a wedding. I'm pretty sure back then the pub was still dispensing the produce of Norwich Brewery but the pub has since been acquired by Lincolnshire brewers Batemans and is the sole outlet for their brews in the town. We opted for the 5G (Five Generations). OK, it was Hobson's Choice as it was the only cask offering.
This so called session IPA of 4.2% – to my mind a session ale should be somewhere around 3.5% or it's likely to be too short a session – is brewed with a mixture of barley, oat and wheat malts as well as hop varieties Fuggles, Harlequin and Olicana. This results in a light amber brew which has hints of tropical fruit on the nose and the fruitiness comes across in the taste along with some biscuity elements. All in all it was a very pleasant pint.
Our next stop was the Short Blue in the High Street where, as Midwinterfest is fast approaching, we had some Rocking Rudolph. This, once upon a time, was Hardy and Hanson seasonal brew but is now produced by Greene King in Bury St. Edmunds since the latter acquired the former in 2006 and subsequently demolished the Kimberley brewery. I'm sure it didn't taste as good as it used to.
From the Short Blue we headed south along the High Street and passed a number of other bygone boozers which will appear in these pages in due course. We also passed Wetherspoon's relatively new William Adams, for no other reason than it's a Wetherspoon's, before darting down Horsey's Lane on our way to the Dock Tavern. Here we sampled a number of their offerings whilst appreciating classic rock from the '60s/'70s which emanated from the jukebox.
Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, ZZ Top, Matt Monro. Matt Monro? So it was to the strains of Born Free that we left and headed back to the High Street and into the Feathers. Not as much choice here, just Hobgoblin or Fuller's London Pride. We both opted for the Pride, sat at a corner table and proceeded to count the number of large screen TVs, each showing something different, which not a single person was watching. I think we counted six, but there may well have been some others out of our line of sight.
Pride downed, off we went to the New Entertainer. The Lacons/Whitbread-owned Suffolk Tavern of my youth is now a cracking free house serving a wide choice of cask ales. Being winter, I thought that I ought to have at least one dark brew on this trip, so I plumped for the plum porter. Whose brew it was now escapes me, which is probably no surprise as I had supped quite a few other brews by this point.
Out of the door, up Cliff Hill. Try the door of the Oddfellow's Arms. Locked. But there are folk supping inside. Notice the notice. Read the notice. Follow the instructions on the notice. Down Cliff Hill, up Drudge Road and in through the rear door.
I can at least name the brewer of the pint that I had here. It was from Grain Brewery in Alburgh, but which specific brew it was escapes me.
After a few beers in Gorleston there's only one thing left to do, and that's to call at Bangla Nites...
...before heading back to our accommodation.
The next bygone boozer on our virtual bus trip is only seventy five yards away from the former Earl Grey. The venue for our next quarterly trip is a bit further away. We'll be visiting my old student haunts in Bangor. That's assuming that I haven't needed the services of Arthur Jary & Sons, or their like, in the meantime.
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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