| Brooker, Ron (2007). Book Review, Bull Croydon Nat Hist Sci Soc, 129: 10-11. |
Book Review
Norwood was open common land in the eighteenth century with only three or four pubs situated on its edge and possibly with one on the common itself. The title for the oldest Norwood pub goes either to the Old Gipsy House or the Horns. Norwood Common in the early nineteenth century gave way to enable the founding of three suburbs, namely West, Upper and South Norwood. Evidently West or Lower Norwood as it was known was the oldest and poorest part of the district and had the highest concentration of pubs, probably to alleviate those dismal living conditions in Victorian times. John Coulter, archivist at the Lewisham Local Studies Library, has through extensive research of original records chronicled the modest growth of public-house building between 1800-50 and the vast increase in the high-Victorian period to cater for the growing population. Spanning two centuries and illustrated with over 100 photographs both old and new, it records over 100 of Norwood’s public houses under their original name, from the humble beer-house, back-street and main road pub, hotel and gin-palace to the modern twentieth-century establishment, of which fewer than half survive today. It details the pubs’ founders or builders – and many a builder in those Victorian times had the yearning to play “mine host” upon retirement. Some builders found it profitable to own a pub as in the case of Thomas Wallis of the Bricklayer’s Arms in Chapel Road, West Norwood who evidently was described as a bricklayer & beer retailer, and builder & beer retailer, whilst for some builders it was seen “as a way of clawing back part of their men’s wages”. It is interesting to note that the short lived Fountain Head beer-house in Beulah Hill, Upper Norwood was established just to annoy the landlord of the Conquering Hero next door. Upon the landlord of the Conquering Hero being driven away, the Fountain Head was closed and the triumphant publican took his place. It further details the people who ran them and their clientele, and in some instances the breweries that supplied them. It also mentions, where applicable, the Beer Act of 1830, the legislation of 1872 that gave some power to magistrates to close superfluous pubs and the 1904 Licensing Act which created a compensation fund which made that closure easier. Pub nomenclature is also looked at, and there is also a list of alternative pub names and nicknames. The Two Towers in Gipsy Road, West Norwood did not possess even one, but is supposed to have taken its name from the towers of the Crystal Palace. The Castle in Norwood High Street, standing at the corner of one of West Norwood’s slums was evidently not for the genteel as “the local name for this public house was the Roaring Donkey because of the fights that took place there, especially on Saturday nights”. This book, as the author states in his introduction, ‘is intended as a work of reference’ and not to be read from cover to cover. What more pleasant way of discovering the social history of a neighbourhood than by the use of an extremely well researched A-Z of public houses? Ron Brooker |
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