The three Forester siblings, Mary, her ten-minute-younger twin Len and little brother James, were hunkered down behind the abandoned tractor in the corner of the onion field. James was gently stroking the head of Jit, their two-year-old border collie, whilst Len peered through his binoculars at the brass knocker on front door of the tumbledown cottage a hundred yards or so away on the other side of Three Furlong Drain. They were all feeling rather cold now as November's easterly wind hit them, having had little other than Lincolnshire's flat fens to obstruct its journey from Siberia. James removed his attention from the dog and wrapped his arms tightly around himself in an attempt to keep warm.
"It's brass monkeys!" he exclaimed.
"Brass knockers too," replied Mary, as she pulled her coat more tightly around her torso.
Len was made of sterner stuff, as teenage boys of the 1950s were. Oblivious to the cold, his arms remained resting on the tractor's rusty front mudguard, eyes focused on the brass knocker, as he maintained his watch on that front door. Surely the dusky stranger wearing a green cap would have to come out again soon.
Let's break away from this Blytonesque adventure to consider the Foresters and the Brass Knocker in a bit more detail. Not the forelimbs of our three sibling heroes, nor the brass knocker on the door of the tumbledown cottage, but a couple of bygone boozers in the Lincolnshire village of Mareham le Fen.
Mrs Bygone Boozer and I had found ourselves once more in Old Bolingbroke, in charge of meeting the needs of Woody the Boreray and his two ovine companions Josh and Jess. And just in case some of you were wondering, the feline and avian occupants are still in existence too, but they don't demand regular grooming like Woody does...
...which is something that he evidently enjoys.
Let loose in Lincolnshire, just like the Forester siblings, Mrs Bygone Boozer and I are free to find our own adventures. No dusky strangers, tumbledown cottages or abandoned tractors for us, just our trusty gravel bikes and some unridden lanes to explore.
On one ride, about a mile south of Horncastle, we turned off the B1183 onto the gated road which runs through Scrivelsby Park.
Scattering the deer, we were soon pretty pleased that we weren't on our road bikes...
...as the road surface became more broken and mud-covered, before finally producing this little obstacle to progress.
"The better part of valour is discretion..." so sayeth Falstaff in King Henry IV Part 1 – nicely appropriate as Henry IV was born in Old Bolingbroke – and, whilst he was really just giving an excuse as to why he wimped out, Mrs BB, taking his statement to mean that caution is better than rash bravery, soundly heeded his advice and headed for the animal bridge. I soon followed her.
Emerging from the park we headed for our second Mareham of the day. The first had been Mareham on the Hill and, as its name suggests, is on a hill. (Don't let anyone tell you that Lincolnshire is flat. It's quite easy to accumulate eight hundred feet of ascent in every ten miles of pedalling without having to specifically hunt down the climbing.) This one was Mareham le Fen and, as it's name suggests is on...
We arrived in the Mareham on the flatlands having travelled along Horncastle Road and on the corner where we met Main Street was this building...
...with this name over the front door.
A hundred and so years earlier, as the Foresters Arms, it looked pretty similar.
The earliest that I've been able to pin this pub down to is probably 1856 when Joseph Hackney appears in White's directory as keeping an unnamed beerhouse.
The Stennett family are later to be found at the Royal Oak, which is still operating on Main Street and Joseph, having also been recorded in the 1861 census at an unnamed beerhouse pops up at the Foresters Arms in the 1868 Post Office directory.
The Ancient Order of Foresters did have a local 'Court' and as these often met in pubs it's quite likely that that's where our establishment got its name from.
Joseph was still there in 1872...
...but had moved on by the time that Kelly's produced their 1876 edition.
Seymour Bontoft runs the Foresters for over a quarter of a century, is still there at the time of the 1901 census, but had left the pub by the time that the next headcount came around. He was still farming and butchering from Main Street, but the pub was being run by George Reuben Reeson.
Mr Reeson wasn't there for long as a couple of years later the place is occupied by Stephen Roberts...
...who was still there in 1930...
...and remained there until his death in 1944. The Foresters' own death came a little later. It continued to operate into the 1990s when it was converted to residential use.
That's the Foresters dealt with, but what's this about a Brass Knocker? Well, whilst digging around for information about the aforementioned hostelry I came across this.
In 1911 a Richard Gosling jnr. was at the Brass Knocker Inn in Mareham le Fen. This is the earliest, and the only named, reference to the place that I've been able to find, although he is listed for a short while as a beer retailer in later Kelly's directories. Here he is in 1913...
...and in 1919.
This is the last record that I can find that relates to the Brass Knocker and it was probably a short-lived venture.
Where was the Brass Knocker? Like the Foresters, it too was on Main Street, but on the other side of the road, a hundred yards or so further east. The building still stands and still bears the name, which made finding the place pretty simple.
It even has a brass knocker, although whether it's the original might be up for debate. What's probably not up for debate is whether there's a dusky stranger wearing a green cap behind the door.
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