PUBS ON PAGE AND SCREEN

In a country where the pub forms such an important part of everyday life, it is no surprise to learn that there are a host of such establishments with film, TV and literary associations.  With Spring around the corner, why not get out and discover some of them.  The following is just a selection; if you know of any others, why not share them via the comments. 

Askrigg, North Yorkshire: The Kings Arms

In 1978 the popular drama All Creatures Great and Small arrived on our TV screens, set in 1940s Yorkshire, based on the books by real-life vet James Herriot, and featuring a trio of vets sharing a practice in a picturesque Yorkshire Dales village.  A number of different Dales locations were used for the filming, but the pub frequented by the vets, The Drovers Arms in Darrowby in the series, was actually the Kings Arms in the lovely village of Askrigg.  There are photographs inside the pub taken during the filming of the series.  For those who want to immerse themselves overnight in the Herriot experience, the pub does not offer accommodation, however Skeldale House just down the road, which acted as the frontage of the vets practice in the series, is a bed and breakfast.

Banff, Aberdeenshire: The Ship Inn

The heartwarming 1983 film Local Hero, about a small Scottish community called Ferness which was tempted by oil riches, was largely filmed in the village of Pennan in Aberdeenshire.  However, the interior of the local pub frequented by villagers and American visitors alike, called the Macaskill Arms in the film, was filmed in The Ship Inn in Banff, also in Aberdeenshire.  The exterior shots were filmed in Pennan itself, with ordinary buildings providing the basis for the facade.  Another pub, the Lochailort Hotel far away in Morar (currently closed), was also used for some of the interior scenes.  All this has not prevented Pennan’s real-life local, the Pennan Inn, from cashing in on the film’s fame.  The inn, which is located opposite the red phone box which played a pivotal role in the story, has a plaque on the wall commemorating the film.    

Bolventor, Cornwall: Jamaica Inn

Jamaica Inn is Daphne du Maurier’s story of a young woman who, following her mother’s death, is forced to go and live with her aunt and drunken uncle in the creepy Jamaica Inn, perched on the wild, windswept moorlands of Cornwall’s interior.  The story was recently serialised for television, attracting widespread derision for the mumbling Cornish accents issuing forth from the actors’ mouths.  The inn of the title actually exists in real life; it used to stand right next to the A30, but improvements to the main artery whisking tourists into Cornwall left it slightly adrift, necessitating a turnoff from the road – just follow the brown tourist sign.  Overnight accommodation is available at the inn – not for the fainthearted, since it has been the scene of many paranormal activities over the years, not surprisingly given the inn’s past as a smugglers’ haunt, which no doubt led to a number of murders.  The main resident ghost is said to be that of a traveller who stepped outside in the middle of his pint and was found dead on the moor the next day.  Footsteps heard along the passage leading to the bar are believed to be that of the ill-fated visitor returning to finish his ale.

Jamaica Inn - geograph.org.uk - 462626.  Photo by Kenneth Allen, via Wikimedia Commons.

Bristol: The Hole In The Wall

Long John Silver in Robert Louis Stephenson’s Treasure Island, surely the ultimate stereotype of the pirate-with-a-West-Country-accent, was the landlord of The Spyglass Inn in the novel.  The story’s narrator, Jim Hawkins, had orders to meet him there and when he arrived he realised with horror that the pub landlord had only one leg.  There are many pubs claiming to be the inspiration for The Spyglass Inn, but the one most closely matching the description is The Hole In The Wall in Bristol, not least because it has a spy-hole feature which was used to keep a look-out for the press gang, and it occupies a quayside position in line with the fictional pub.  Centrally located near Queen Square and the Arnolfini Gallery, the real-life pub continues to serve up food and drink to hungry and thirsty Bristolians and visitors.

Denton, Kent: The Jackdaw Inn

The wartime classic The Battle of Britain, released in 1969, is full of wonderful vintage scenes depicting the lifestyles of wartime Britain.  One of them features a pub where Squadron Leader Colin Harvey (Christopher Plummer) meets his screen wife (Susannah York).  The scene was filmed in Kent in The Jackdaw Inn , Denton.  Wartime memories live on in the pub with lots of wartime RAF memorabilia and vintage posters such as the one declaring “Don’t Help the Enemy! Careless Talk May Give Away Vital Secrets”, a poster which can be seen in the background in the film.   The pub used to be called The Red Lion, but it was renamed in 1962 because the Whitbread brewery felt there were too many pubs in the area with the same name.

Goathland: The Goathland Hotel

Heartbeat is a British TV series set in the 1960s in North Yorkshire, starring Nick Berry as PC Nick Rowan, which was shown between 1991 and 2009.  The filming of the series was centred around the village of Goathland,which lies on the Whitby to Pickering North Yorkshire Moors Railway line.  The local pub which featured in the story was the Aidensfield Arms, which was depicted by the Goathland Hotel.  The filming entailed the rebuilding of the interior of the bar as well as using the exterior for outside shots.

The Goathland Hotel (Aidensfield Arms) - geograph.org.uk - 685503.  Photo by Nicholas Mutton, via Wikimedia Commons.

London: The Grapes

Located at 76 Narrow Street, Limehouse, this inn was originally The Bunch of Grapes, built in 1583.  Its main literary claim to fame is that it was frequented by Charles Dickens.  In fact the opening sentences of Our Mutual Friend are believed to refer to it, describing it as “a tavern of dropsical appearance” in a “state of hale infirmity”.  Dickens went on to describe the inn’s waterside location as akin to “a faint-hearted diver, who has paused so long on the brink that he will never go in at all”.  The pub has a venerable history, particularly from the Elizabethan era, when Sir Walter Raleigh set sail on his third voyage to the New World from the river just below.  The present-day pub, now owned by the actor Sir Ian McKellen, has a small balcony overlooking the river, and Dickens fans will find a complete set of his works in the back parlour.

Newcastle Upon Tyne: The Victoria Comet

The premises now occupied by the Victoria Comet in Newcastle played a starring role in the 1972 Geordie gangster classic Get Carter starring Michael Caine, so much so that it is commonly referred to as the ‘Get Carter pub’.  When the venue started out as a pub in the 1800s, it was actually two pubs, The Victoria and The Comet, which later became a hotel known as The Victoria and Comet.  After a spell as a branch of O’Neills, it was revamped and renamed The Victoria Comet in a nod to its past, with posters depicting scenes from the film on the walls.  In the film the Caine character Jack Carter, following his arrival by train at the city’s main station, fetches up at the pub, where a young Alun Armstrong is serving behind the bar.  Allegedly some of the pub regulars were given roles as extras in the film and they took to their parts a bit too enthusiastically, including the imbibing of real beer, bringing them to various states of inebriation.  

New Quay: The Black Lion

High up above the harbour of this charming small resort on the coast of Ceredigion, The Black Lion boasts lovely views from its large garden.  In the mid-1940s the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas moved into Majoda, a house in an idyllic setting on the clifftop just outside the town.  It is a well-known fact that drinking was one of Thomas’ favourite pursuits, and The Black Lion was his favourite pub in New Quay.  The Dylan Restaurant in the basement has a large amount of Dylan Thomas memorabilia displayed on the walls.  Across the road from the pub is Gomer House, the former home of Captain Tom Polly, who was the inspiration for Captain Cat, the blind sea captain in Under Milk Wood.

Oxford: The Eagle and Child

Set among the venerable college buildings of Oxford University, the Eagle and Child was once a favourite haunt of J. R. R. Tolkien of The Hobbit fame.  He used to visit the pub as part of a group of writers called the Inklings, which also included C. S. Lewis.   Tolkien and Lewis were both at the English Faculty at the University.  Built in the mid-1600s, the pub’s name is said to have come from the crest of the Earl of Derby, which has an image of a baby in an eagle’s nest.  The pub recalls its literary past with photos on the wall and a plaque commemorating the Inklings.  (Postscript: The Eagle and Child is currently closed, but is expected to reopen in a new guise at some point.)

Slad, Gloucestershire: The Woolpack

With a beer terrace overlooking a beautiful valley in the southern Cotswolds, the interior of the Woolpack Inn in Slad looks as though it has never changed over the years, and certainly not since the times when local literary celebrity the late Laurie Lee used to prop up the bar here.  Slad was Lee’s home village, and his most famous work Cider With Rosie delightfully conjures up what comes across as an idyllic childhood.  After he married his wife Kathy, the couple made their home in a house just across the road.  The pub, which gets a mention in Cider With Rosie, has pictures of Laurie Lee on the walls, and there is a beer produced by the local Uley brewery named after him.  Fans of the writer who visit the pub for a pint can raise a glass to him while glancing up the road to the Church of Holy Trinity, where he is buried in the graveyard.

The Woolpack, Slad.

Whitstable: The Old Neptune

Perched precariously on Whitstable’s shingle beach, the Old Neptune – or Neppy as it is affectionately called by the locals – is in prime position for admiring the town’s legendary sunsets.  In 2006 Peter O’Toole, in a rather frail state from a broken hip, starred in the film Venus as a veteran actor, and some of the filming took place in the Neppy.  O’Toole was  nominated for an Oscar for the role, but he was beaten to it by Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin.  The pub was taken over for the whole day for filming, but the crew finished early and O’Toole bought the entire pub a round of drinks before leaving. 

The Old Neptune, Whitstable.

                                

CHRISTIE COMES TO CORNWALL: AND THEN THERE WERE NONE

Aidan Turner fans living in Cornwall must think they have died and gone to heaven.  Not only has the Irish heartthrob made repeated visits to the county for the filming of Poldark – one series in the bag and another to come – but in summer 2015 he turned up on the county’s south coast for the filming of And Then There Were None, a TV adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel of the same name – originally given the rather less PC name Ten Little Niggers - which was aired over Christmas.  Female fans were no doubt particularly thrilled by a scene featuring Turner clad in nothing but a towel. 

The stylish and suspenseful mini-series also included luminaries such as Charles Dance, Miranda Richardson and Sam Neill whose characters form part of a group of people who are lured to an island called Soldier Island under various pretexts.  All of the ‘guests’ have been involved in the deaths of other people during their pasts and escaped justice.  A spooky gramophone recording informs them that they are going to get their comeuppance, and a series of murders ensues until the final scene when only two of the group remain: ex-mercenary Philip Lombard (Aidan Turner) and Vera (Maeve Dermody).  The series was critically acclaimed as a highly atmospheric drama with wonderfully tense scenes, particularly over dinner as the guests all start to suspect each other.

Mullion Island - geograph.org.uk - 371703. Photo by John Garfoot, via Wikimedia Commons.

The island which forms the main focus of the story was inspired by Burgh Island in Devon, but the island used in the TV series was Mullion Island.  In real life the island is a small uninhabited island offshore from Mullion Cove, which is where the scene was filmed in which the ill-fated group of guests are rowed out to the island.  In real life, Mullion Island does not have a mansion such as that depicted in the series: the building used for this was Harefield House in Hillingdon.  In one of the most striking scenes, there is an aerial view of a clifftop with a gaping hole and seagulls circling over it.  This was filmed at the Round Hole at Trevose Head near Constantine Bay on the North Cornwall coast. However, the most dramatic scene of all is the final showdown between Vera and Philip on one of the island’s beaches, with Philip ending up lying in a pool of blood in the shallows having been shot by Vera.  In real life this beach is Kynance Cove, one of the most beautiful spots on the Cornish coast.

Kynance Cove

Mullion Cove and Kynance Cove are very close together, both of them just to the west of Lizard Point, the most southerly place in mainland Britain.  Mullion’s tiny harbour has seen plenty of pirate and smuggling activity in the past.  The harbour was completed in 1895 with its two sturdy walls protecting the harbour from fierce winter gales.  The island is a nesting site for guillemots and kittiwakes, but is not open to the public.  Kynance Cove is a riot of interesting rock formations and golden sand lapped by turquoise sea.  There is a car park above the cove from where a path leads down to the beach, taking in a cafe on the way.  Just offshore is Asparagus Island, so called because wild asparagus used to grow there.  Trevose Head is a short distance from Padstow, and its Round Hole is a natural blowhole, formed from centuries of erosion upwards from caves below.  

Mullion Cove Harbour - geograph.org.uk - 266470. Photo by Tony Atkin, via Wikimedia Commons.

BATMAN: THE NOTTINGHAMSHIRE CONNECTION

The Dark Knight Rises, the final film in the Batman trilogy directed by Christopher Nolan, stars Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne, the billionaire CEO of Wayne Enterprises, whose alter ego spends his time out and about fighting crime dressed in a bat suit, in a bid to avenge the brutal murder of his parents, Thomas and Martha Wayne, when he was a young boy.  The ancestral home of the Wayne family is Wayne Manor, and the exterior of the manor is magnificently depicted in The Dark Knight Rises by the16th century Elizabethan mansion in the suburbs of Nottingham known in real life as Wollaton Hall (the interior scenes were shot at Osterley Park House near London).  In summer 2011 the cast and crew of the film descended on Wollaton Hall along with Bruce Wayne’s Lamborghini Aventador for the exterior shots.  Apparently they left their mark while there: a production truck accidentally backed into an ancient wall and demolished it.   

The Hall was built in the 1580s by Sir Francis Willoughby, and as well as the mansion includes extensive grounds with a deer park and a botanic garden.  The house itself now houses the city’s Natural History Museum, as well as the Industrial Museum, the Yard Gallery and some reconstructed room settings.  Tours of the Hall are available for £5, otherwise admission is free plus parking charges.  Not surprisingly, since the release of the film the Hall has experienced an upturn in visitors, especially foreign tourists.

Wollaton hall from front. Photo by Lee Haywood, via Wikimedia Commons.

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But Wollaton Hall is not the only place in Nottinghamshire associated with Batman.  There is a village in the county called Gotham which indirectly provided the inspiration for the sprawling metropolis in the Batman stories known as Gotham City, which is generally accepted as representing New Jersey in real life.  The story goes that several centuries ago the Gotham villagers acquired a reputation for madness when King John was due to pass through the village.  According to tradition, any road the King travelled on would become a public highway, so the villagers feigned insanity to deter the King. The antics of the villagers were chronicled in various books including The Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham, published in 1565.  The American author Washington Irving got wind of this story and took to referring to Manhattan as Gotham when writing satirical pieces about New Yorkers, and this eventually led to the writer of the Batman stories adopting the name.

Today, all such tomfoolery has been forgotten and the village is a sleepy little spot 2 miles south of the River Trent surrounded by low wooded hills.  However, the village clings proudly to its past and the link to Batman, and in 2013 a sculpture in the form of a weather vane was unveiled representing some of the legends of Gotham which features Batman climbing up the side.  Inevitably, the connection to the Batman stories, comics and films has had side effects, not all of them good.  In 2014 the village sign was stolen, presumably by a dedicated Batman fan.  Last year, however, the village sought to gain some benefit from its fame by urging Batman fans to help save a Royal British Legion building in the village which had fallen on hard times.  Also last year, Gotham Parish Council arranged for Batman and Robin to turn on the village Christmas lights in a bid to raise enough money for vital repairs to the historic Well House, a focal point for the local community. 

Gotham Legends weather vane. Photo by Palmiped, via Wikimedia Commons.

Map of Wollaton.

Map of Gotham.

A GLIMPSE INTO THE PAST: BETJEMAN'S BRITAIN

So far in this blog I have posted pieces about locations in Britain featured on the big or small screen, or in literature.  This one is a bit of a departure, because it concerns a series of radio broadcasts by the late poet laureate Sir John Betjeman.  I have just been reading a book called Trains and Buttered Toast, which includes transcripts of Betjeman’s radio broadcasts, and I found them fascinating as an insight into a Britain long since disappeared, chiefly covering the period between the wars in the 1930s.  I have picked out three of the broadcasts, covering Swindon, Plymouth and Exeter.

Swindon is often reviled for its dubious town planning and the plethora of roundabouts in its road system, but it seems things were not much better in the 1930s if Betjeman’s description is anything to go by.  He comments that “you can stand among the red brick villas which compose its streets and find it impossible to believe that the loveliest country in England is only a few miles away”.  Although he does concede that “there are no real slums in Swindon”, and that its people have “good hearts”.  He also highlights the role of the railway in the town’s development, which led to the building of Swindon New Town (and the present-day Steam Museum - see below), but he despairs that “the building went on”, and bemoans the lack of public parks in the town.  Betjeman seems to reserve a particular disdain for the houses making up the suburbs of towns up and down the country.  In Swindon’s case, he sneers at the “stained glass windows” and “sham beams” of mock Tudor houses, quipping that they are “no more Tudor than I am William Shakespeare”.  Among these suburbs he singles out the “rows of speculative houses situated in the pleasant purlieus of the gasworks”.  I particularly love his portrayal of Swindon's outward growth, describing how the town “flounders about like a helpless octopus, spreading its horrid tentacles into quiet, untroubled places”.  

Steam Museum (9331166981). Photo by Jim, via Wikimedia Commons

Plymouth will no doubt have changed dramatically since Betjeman spoke about it in the 1930s.  Since there is an important naval base there, much of the city was flattened during World War II, and much of the rebuilding that has taken place since includes some spectaculary ugly examples of mid-20^th century architecture.  In his 1937 broadcast, Betjeman notes the nautical air of the city, talking of “pink-faced naval officers drinking pink gin in exclusive bars”, while in the houses “the model ship has ousted the aspidistra in the window space”.  Union Street, which was once notorious as a red light district servicing visiting sailors, at the time of Betjeman’s broadcast about the city had “Devonport’s magnificent but decayed civic centre” at one end and at the other St Catherine’s Church, the Athenaeum, the Royal Hotel, the Assembly Rooms and the Theatre Royal.  Again he has a go at the suburbs, in this case a “special sort of villa that has spread like a rash”, with the ones on the Totnes Road “among the ugliest in England”.  He does reserve praise, though, for Albemarle Villas, the Proprietary Library, St Michael’s Terrace, Wyndham Square and Union Street itself, and he comments that there is almost as much in Plymouth worth preserving as there is in London.  Unfortunately, the Germans put paid to that idea just a few years later. 

Smeatons' Tower and the Hoe from the sea - geograph.org.uk - 1680191. Photo by Paul Buckingham, via Wikimedia Commons.

Betjeman’s broadcast about Exeter predates the coming of the M5 motorway, which had arrived at the city by 1977.  Back in the days before motorways and ring roads, traffic was forced to go through city centres, and Betjeman describes the “appalling jam of traffic which there always seems to be in Exeter High Street”.  He also rails against the “inappropriate fronts of multiple stores clapped onto mediaeval, Stuart and Georgian buildings” – a situation which has since become far worse in the era of garish chain stores in city and town centres up and down the land.  He looks on the city as a “sort of lesser Stratford-upon-Avon but with a cathedral thrown in”.  However, he applauds the Georgian architecture of Southernhay and the crescents near it.  Unfortunately, like Plymouth, Exeter suffered massively during  World War II, particularly in 1942, the year of the so-called “Exeter blitz”, part of the “Baedeker Raids”, which singled out targets for their cultural and historic significance.

                                     

                                Exeter Cathedral 3. Photo by Peter Broster, via Wikimedia Commons.

So what of the present day?  Well, Swindon makes much of its railway heritage, and is the home of the Steam - the Museum of the Great Western Railway.  Wives of railway buffs can leave their husbands to view the train memorabilia while heading over to the Swindon Designer Outlet for some retail therapy.  Plymouth’s city centre may be uninspiring architecturally, but it retains the seaside charm of the Hoe with the red and white striped Smeaton’s Tower lighthouse.  Nearby is the quaint quarter known as the Barbican, one of the few areas of the city to escape the wartime bombings, with an enticing array of pubs, restaurants and shops, and the more recently built Sutton Harbour with yet more places to eat and drink, as well as a marina.  Unfortunately, the Royal Hotel mentioned by Betjeman received a direct hit during the bombing raids, as did the Greek Doric-style Athenaeum, which was replaced by a hideous modern building which has been its home since 1961.  Exeter still has its cathedral with an attractive cathedral close, and down in the lower part of town there is a waterside development at what is known as The Quay, with restaurants, bars and shops, as well as kayaks for hire which can be used to explore the Exeter Ship Canal.