POTTERS BAR

VIEW
from the Bar Room Floor
In my last ‘View’, I said I preferred not to visit Newcastle
Town Centre on a Friday night. Thank you to all the
CAMRA members who told me that Newcastle is now
relatively peaceful on Friday night, and also to those
who told me that the place to avoid (at least, for a Senior
Citizen such as myself), is Hanley Town Centre– on any
night of the week!
On to this issue’s ‘View’: I would now like to tell you about
the nicest landlord I ever knew, the nicest landlady I ever
knew and also the nicest CAMRA member!
When our children – one of whom grew up to be the
Chairman of CAMRA Potteries Branch - were young, my
wife and I used to take them walking in Derbyshire and
it was there that we discovered The Horse and Jockey
in Tideswell. Wherever we went, we had to sneak our
children in (when we found an accommodating landlord)
in those less enlightened days. And the then landlord of
The Horse and Jockey proved to be a welcoming host.
But it wasn’t just his attitude to children that endeared him
to me. His pub truly was the social heart of the village
community. Everyone in Tideswell knew and respected
this good man. He was a lovely man, who knew how to
keep real ale at its best. This was in the early years of
CAMRA and his growing reputation meant that CAMRA
members came from all over the place, not that he treated
them any different from any other drinkers who called at
his pub. We even had a CAMRA Potteries bus trip so
some of my other friends could see what a nice man,
what a good landlord, he was. And like all good landlords,
he was a good talker! He retired to the nearby village of
Bradwell, where I hope he is still enjoying a well-earned
rest.
I regret that time has erased his name from my memory
banks. Not so with the nicest landlady I ever knew. Her
name was Irene and she presided at The Devonshire
Arms in Hartington. When I organised pub quizzes for the
Citizen’s Advice Branch in Leek, Irene told me that her
pub wanted to enter a team. There was just one problem:
the quiz rules (which I wrote) said that the landlord or
landlady was responsible for providing the hospitality,
and she’d never had such an event at her pub before.
She came along to several other quizzes in Leek and The
Moorlands and saw what others provided. And then we
paid our first visit to The Devonshire Arms and what a
night it was! The two teams were assembled, as were lots
of local drinkers and before the quiz, Irene emerged with
two large bowls of hot and lovely chips, one for the teams,
one for the audience. And then the quiz got underway.
And as the night wore on, more and more food was
brought out: sandwiches, salad, anything you might think
worthy for a pub quiz night was on display. And always
there was Irene, a lovely lady who, with her husband, ran
a smashing pub; like The Horse and Jockey, it was the
heart of the community.
We had the semi-finals and final of the quiz championship
at Bank House in Leek, attended by the mayors and
CEO’s of Leek and neighbouring towns and I always
asked Irene to call at the Hartington Cheese Factory to
collect a stilton cheese for my Christmas treat. She really
was a smashing lady. Later, she moved from Hartington
to run a Working Men’s Club somewhere in the Midlands,
which she undoubtedly made another success of. Today,
I hope she is living in happy retirement with her husband.
To raise awareness of, and money for, the Citizen’s Advice
Bureau, I walked to every single pub taking part in the CAB
quiz championship: over several days, of course, for we
had pubs in Biddulph, Endon, Leek, Ashbourne, Longford,
Earl Sterndale and Buxton taking part. The last walk
was from Ashbourne to Hartington on a cold November
afternoon. And as I left Ashbourne, the clouds went dark
20 POTTERS BAR AUTUMN 2016