Shakespeare's Local by Pete Brown

I love Southwark. It's got the Borough Market under the railway viaducts, and Southwark Cathedral, and the Globe (I once went with my Young Man, to be a groundling when As You Like It was on, which was brilliant fun, but my back needed a day to recover from all the standing!) - and it has The George, the last coaching inn left standing along the Borough High Street.
When I next go to Southwark, I will be going with Shakespeare's Local in my hand. Pete Brown has been all over the world looking at different pub cultures, and taken a barrel of IPA from Burton-upon-Trent to India, but this time he's concentrated on one historic building in one small area, and brought out everything that's fascinating about it.
At the time when London Bridge was the only way into the city from that side of the river (apart from the watermen's boats - and the watermen successfully prevented another bridge being built for centuries) the George was only one of a whole row of inns. It wasn't the most famous, or the biggest, or the best, but it is the only one left standing. Originally it stood alongside inns such as The Tabard, where Chaucer's pilgrims gathered to start their journey to Canterbury, and The White Hart, immortalised by Dickens in the Pickwick Papers.
London Bridge was also the place where traitors' heads were displayed on spikes, on the gatehouse to the bridge (and is now the area where the Clink prison and the London Dungeon pull in the tourists).
The George itself seems to be quite a large pub at first glance, but in its glory days during the coaching era it was five times bigger. Not far away is Vinopolis, a huge wine merchants - I went in there with my Young Man once to gaze in amazement at the largest selection of whiskeys either of us had ever seen - and Vinopolis is on the site of the Anchor Brewery, which once covered 12 acres!
The George is now owned by the National Trust, and run by Greene King, and it's a wonderful place for a drink in an area which has several very fine pubs, especially on a fine summer day when you can sit outside in the inn yard. It doesn't take much imagination to see the galleried building that was once on the other side of the inn yard, and the stables beyond (and there were hop warehouses, too).
Pete Brown has written other beer related books before this: Man Walks Into a Pub, Three Sheets to the Wind and Hops and Glory. I very rarely buy new books, living as I do in a town full of second hand books, but I bought all of these, and I highly recommend them all.

Tea!

I didn't just drink beer while I was in Lincoln - I also went to a rather superior tea shop!

This is the Norman House on Steep Hill, and inside is the most amazing selection of teas that I have ever seen. Some are incredibly rare - only picked by the light of the full moon from one hillside in China, that sort of thing!
I also managed to get some more Russian Caravan Tea, as I've grown rather fond of the taste since I discovered it in that other amazing tea shop in Bath (which I wrote about on 10th July on my other blog, Life in Hay).
Underneath the tea shop, in the Norman undercroft, is a cafe and bookshop. The chap behind the counter (wearing a rather snazzy waistcoat with old books pictured on it) said that he had opened up in May as both a tea shop and an outlet for local authors to sell their books. He also has a selection of second hand books that can be browsed as you sip. My Young Man was very taken with the design of the teapots, which had a plunger set into the lid, and the tea cups, which were wide and shallow, with a deep brim - the chap explained that they were the sort of tea cups that professional tea tasters use, to bring out the full aroma of the tea.
I must say, the Darjeeling was excellent!

Both shops are, of course, online, at www.imperialteas.co.uk and www.bookstopcafe.com

A Pub Not to be Missed

A little while ago, I got a book called London Heritage Pubs, and amongst the top "Ten Pubs not to miss" was the Black Friar.
Last week, I finally made it there. We had a delicious meal, a mixed plate of nibbles to share, and a pleasant half of Adnams Fat Sprat (which they brew to support the Marine Conservation Society).
It's a long narrow building, which was once a corner on narrow streets - all gone now. We sat in the bar, which was impressive enough, with the frieze above the bar of cheery monks going about their business - but the Saloon was a marvel of marble and brass! There were little mottos attached to the pictures, such as "Tomorrow will be Friday" under a picture of the monks catching fish for their Friday meal, and "Don't Advertise it, Tell a Gossip".
The pub was almost lost, along with so much else in the redevelopments of the 1960s, and Sir John Betjeman the poet laureate was one of the famous people who campaigned to save it.
The reason for the name Black Friar is that there was a Priory of Dominican Friars, known as the Black Friars, in the area during the middle ages. Medieval Parliaments met there on occasion, and Henry VIII held his divorce hearing against Catherine of Aragon as a guest of the friars - and later dissolved the Priory along with all the other religious houses in Britain.

Coach Trip to the Past

It's a pity it was such a wet and dismal day - it would have been lovely to stroll around the 17thC formal garden at the home of the fourth richest man in Wales (and the richest in Glamorgan). Colonel Pritchard and his wife Mary Mansell owned two thirds of Glamorgan between them, and they lived at Llancaiach Fawr, a fortified manor house which has been restored to its appearance in 1645, when King Charles came to visit.
The guides, all in period costume and speaking period English, are superb. We saw the music master, head groom, under dairymaid and the Colonel's agent and surveyor, but there are other guides who play different parts as well. The Colonel's agent particularly impressed me - having discovered our party were from Hay-on-Wye, he said that it was probably best that we were away from home, as the Scottish Covenanters had been seen marching on Hereford! And having seen the music master demonstrate, I now have a desire to attempt to play the psaltery!
From the head groom, we learned of the usefulness of pigeons in sending messages from besieged houses, and why so many manor houses built new, wider staircases around 1620 (the big staircase in this manor house was built in 1628).* We also discovered how the news of fashions in London travelled around the country - with the drovers, who also carried all sorts of news, and were welcome everywhere as they were known to be of good character.
This was a house with 11 staircases, some of them blocked up when they went out of use, and a great luxury - indoor privies, in a latrine tower which dropped the effluent into a stream that runs below the house.
We saw the bedroom of the lady of the house, where she would entertain her "chat-mates" with music and gossip, and the master's bedroom, where he would conduct late night business (presumably having just wined and dined his associates in the grand hall and withdrawing room beyond). One of our party embarrassed the guide by asking where the master and the lady got together to make babies, if they had separate bedrooms! (It may have been revenge for him suggesting that women had smaller brains earlier!)



The Master Bedroom

They have a website at www.llancaiachfawr.co.uk

*the answer being - women's fashions! Skirts for fashionable ladies became too wide to fit easily up the narrow medieval staircases that had been in use up till then!