Citylife in Lichfield November 2021

The Lost Pubs of Lichfield
The Constitution Inn
& The Carpenter’s Arms
By Jono Oates
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The lost pubs of Lichfield series continues with a former pub flattened to make way for
a road extension and a community pub demolished to become housing.
The Constitution Inn was situated on the Stafford Road at the junction of what is now the A51
bypass to Rugeley and Featherbed Lane, the road to Kings Bromley and Ashbourne. The first listed
licensee of the inn was John Rushton in 1868, followed by John Clay in 1880.
In August 1909 two men from Newcastle-Under-Lyme were travelling to an agricultural show at
Tamworth with a waggon load of goods and stopped at the Constitution Inn where they stole two
brooms from the waggon and sold them to Emma Barlow, wife of the landlord Hebert Barlow, for
six pence. The men were later arrested and were fined £1 10s and 6d for their clumsy crime.
The winter of 1947 was one of one of the coldest winters in history when snow lay on the
ground for nearly three months. Two Lichfield men, who had been delivering food parcels across
Lichfield all day, decided that they wanted a stiff drink after all of their labours. They stopped at the
Constitution but, when they arrived, they discovered that the front door was completely
submerged by a snowdrift! Undaunted, and clearly desperate for a thirst-quenching pint, they
grabbed a couple of shovels and dug their way to the door where landlady Gertrude Wood opened
up and allowed them their well-earned drinks!
In early 1956 the area around the inn was designated for re-development due to the construction
of the A51 bypass and associated roundabout. As the Constitution was in the direct ‘flight-path’ it
was scheduled for demolition. Gertrude Wood died in March 1956, just a few months before her
beloved pub was due to be knocked to the ground, and the license temporarily passed to one of
her daughters, Marjorie Gertrude Wood. Marjorie held a farewell party in June 1956 for all the pub’s
regulars, including Frank Horton, who lived next door to the Constitution and had been a regular
there for 75 years. He said that when he was three-years-old he had sat on the steps of the inn and
had been given a pint of beer to drink by Mrs Clay, wife of landlord John Clay! The pub shut its
doors for the last time that night and the license was then transferred to the then ‘new’ Windmill
pub on Grange Lane.
The Carpenter’s Arms started life originally in 1848 as a private house on Christchurch Lane,
Leomansley, run by Martha Page, described in the 1851 census as a beer house keeper and her
husband, James, a carpenter. By 1880 it was recorded as the Carpenter’s Arms, using the profession
of the former landlord as its name. The new landlord was Thomas Wright who, in June 1880, was
also selling a few thousand broccoli and large quantity of Dutch Savoy plants from the Carpenter’s
– clearly a case of Victorian diversification!
From the late 1920s to the early 1950s the landlord was Frank Bucknall and in October 1947
the Lichfield Mercury reported he had been the landlord at the Carpenter’s for 17 years – only to
issue an apology the following week, explaining that it was actually 22 years, using the title ‘How
Time Flies…’
Frank’s son, Wilfred, served in WWII and just before Christmas 1945 was still stationed at
Rangoon, Burma, when he wrote a letter home to his wife at the Carpenter’s telling her how
surprised he’d been to open the Southeast Area Command newsletter to find a photograph of
Lichfield Cathedral on the back cover with the word ‘Home!’ on it. A few months later Wilf, along
with thousands of others, finally returned home.
The Revd G Mayhew, vicar of Christ Church, provided a Harvest Festival sermon from the inside
of the Carpenter’s in October 1948, saying ‘if we could get into our churches some of the kindly
feeling which exists among some of the customers of the local inns, it might be good for the church’
and that a public house was not just a place where men came to ‘booze and argue.’
Despite being a very popular community pub the Carpenter’s Arms was closed in 2002 and,
following demolition, became apartments.
Carpenters Arms, lanldord Frank
Bucknall, circa 1930
Carpenters Arms after closure in 2002
Constitution Inn just before closure, 1955
Sources: The British Newspaper Archive’; Lichfield Pubs by Neil Coley, The Old Pubs of
Lichfield by John Shaw.
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