THAT PUB AGAIN

After last night's pub quizz which saw Gigi winning the first prize, a little information on the Crown from the inside...my parents used to own this pub in the 1960s. The Crown is one of the oldest pubs in England, and is mentioned in the Doomsday Book, although it would appear that it really got going on a permanent basis in the 13th century when it was enlarged and probably improved. It is on the old London to Portsmouth road and was a staging post. It was said that Elizabeth I stopped off there for a quick pint, but if she really went to all the pubs that now say she stopped there, the poor woman must have been on one continual pub-crawl throughout her life!

As a child living there, I loved that pub, and my brothers too. We actually lived there for a certain time until my parents bought a house nearby and could then re-let the two bedrooms we occupied. In those day, the Crown was very fashionable and a very busy place - on the weekends it was heaving as the 'bright young things' came down from London for the weekend, often on their way to Goodwood for the horse or motor racing. We actually saw little of this, as unless the bar was quiet at lunchtime, we were not allowed in and in the evenings we were packed off to bed (remember those days when you had to go to bed when it was still light outside?). We also rarely ate in the dining room, but had our own little room nearby. If this was used as a private dining room we were then allowed into the main diningroom for lunch which was a great treat. The starched tableclothes, the linen napkins splayed out in a fan shape, the grissini, the butter cut into fancy shapes - we thought it was marvellous. Don't forget we are in the '60s and dining in England at that time was prawn cocktail and fillet steak and if you were really extravagant, crepes suzette cooked over the lamp at your table!

The Crown had a ghost - we were convinced of this. We never saw it but there was an area upstairs that was always cold and chilly and I used to run through that part of the house at great speed. Once in a while I have a vague dream involving that corridor - it's very weird.

The village in those days was still a rural English village. On the edge of the Green there was still a working blacksmith's forge and I used to lurk in the doorway watching the smithy shoeing horses - I was absolutely terrified of him although he was probably a harmless old boy, but the atmosphere in the smithy with the bellows working flat out and the smell as the hot horseshoe was placed on the hoof have left a lasting impression.

The event of the year was Guy Fawkes and weeks before the event the villagers would start building an enormous bonfire on the Green. On the night literally hundreds of people used to attend and of course in those days there were fireworks going off all over the place which is now banned. One year the chimney in the 'Lounge Bar' caught fire and there were great sparks coming out of the chimney - how the place didn't catch fire, goodness knows. Amongst the clients in the overflowing bar, the firemen were running hoses through the pub trying to put out the fire - it made our evening!





We also had Morris dancing on the Green, although I only saw it once; Morris dancing was by then virtually non-existant until revived in the '80s.

I went back to the Crown about 15 years ago and it was so, so sad - it had become a sort of burger joint and was a disgrace. I returned a couple of years ago with my brother and joy! It had had changed hands, restored to its former glory and we had some halfway decent food. And the sedan chair which had the public telephone in it was still there! I think it has recently changed hands again but am not sure - from a recent photo I see that unfortunately the outside has been painted a sort of butter yellow which gives it a rather plastic look and the gorgeous wisteria that shaded the front of the pub in the summer is no longer there...