Depending upon which source you believe, a blue moon occurs on 4.1 occasions every ten years. That seems to be about as often as I manage to meet up with both of my siblings. The three of us have been found together in the same room just three times in the last decade. Each of those was related to one of us having survived long enough to reach the next 'big' birthday. This was to be the fourth rendezvous since 2014, with nothing bigger to celebrate than the coming Midwinterfest.
Owing to the geographical separation between Sussex, Derbyshire and Yorkshire we decided to spend a Saturday night at a pub somewhere close to the M1 and plumped for the Queen's Head in Belton, Leicestershire. With rooms booked and table reserved, Mrs Bygone Boozer and I headed south.
Now, I'm always a bit suspicious of restaurantised pubs, if restaurantised is a word. Actually, I'm a bit suspicious of them even if it's not. Far too many are essentially restaurants with a bar attached. A bar which is completely devoid of atmosphere. Not so the Queen's Head. On entering, we received a friendly greeting from both staff and locals, with there being quite a number of the latter chatting about the afternoon's football results. There was plenty of comfy seating too.
In addition to a lack of atmosphere, restaurantised pubs are also often lacking on the decent beer front. Not so here, with there being a choice of three.
I went for Hollow Stone's English Pale Ale. A 4.2% brew, dry-hopped with El Dorado and Amarillo hops. It pulled starbright and was very quaffable with its hints of grapefruity citrus. It went down very well with the House Faggots in Onion Gravy too.
The Queen's Head is now the only watering hole left in Belton, but until fairly recently it had some competition from the George Inn, which stood in the centre of the southern side of the Market Place.
A former coaching inn, the George is a Grade II listed building, presumably dating from 1753 as there is a brick by the door which bears those four numerals in that exact order. In the mid-nineteenth century it was occupied and run by the Toone family.
White's directory of 1846 shows Ann Toone at the George...
...as does the Post Office directory of 1849. There is only one minor issue with this, and that's the fact that Ann had died in 1848. The operation of the George was taken on by her daughter Elizabeth...
...who was still there in 1861...
...and when she herself died, in 1870, her niece, Ann's granddaughter, Mary took over.
When the Toones did end their association the place it seemed to change hands relatively frequently, with John Field having possession in 1911.
A century after John was there the George was no more, having been converted to apartments, some of which, at least, were still waiting for buyers when Mr. Google drove past in June 2011.
Its appearance hasn't altered much in the intervening dozen or so years.
With the Full English Breakfast consumed, and the Midwinterfest gifts exchanged, we three siblings separated and headed off in our different directions. Before we departed we all agreed that we ought to do this more often. Provided it doesn't happen for at least another sixteen months the meet-up will still be occurring with the frequency of a blue moon.
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. Carolyn Mansfield's image of the George Inn is also copyright and is reused under this one.
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Sad to see that pub go because it was a decent boozer. The maypole is interesting, one of only 3 (I think) permanent ones in England.