The Plough Inn | St Mary Bourne Goes To War

James Willshire had been running the alehouse The Plough for several years with the help of his wife Margaret, who was four years older than him. He had been an innkeeper and master brewer for many years; his father had taught him the brewing trade, which he had combined with being a cooper.Now in his sixty-third year and with his legs not so good, James was still able to change the barrels when needed, putting full barrels on the racks and taking the empties out to the store at the back of the pub. He sat each evening with his one pint, along with the other old regulars, puffing away on their pipes and discussing the harvest- the cost of feed etc. and other village gossip.

James and his wife Margaret had worked together all their married life, and, as their two sons Victor and Ernest had left home to follow their own careers, they decided to train Laura in the art of innkeeping, enabling them both to take life a little easier. Laura had done well at school and was quick with numbers. She was friendly and polite and very willing to learn. Initially Margaret kept Laura behind the counter, teaching her how to pull a pint, how to measure a spirit drink and, most importantly, how to deal with customers.

“Always be ready to listen when a customer feels like talking, but never offer your own opinion”, was one of her maxims. “Never repeat what one customer says, to another”, was another. “Let them do the talking and you do the listening”, she would advise. Then she might promptly lean on the bar and whisper to a customer “did you hear that…….”

Laura, now 26 years old, ran the inn almost singlehandedly, though of course her father was still the owner. She employed a pot man; though employed was not quite the correct description for their arrangement – he would collect the empty pots and jugs from the tables in the bar and outside in the yard, and also sweep up the sawdust after closing time and lay fresh for the next day – as payment she gave him a free pint of ale with some bread and cheese each midday and maybe a bowl of broth for dinner, so he was grateful for her generosity. Not that you would know this, as he was a morose old man with very little to say and grunted replies to anyone who spoke to him.

The young lads of the valley often gathered on the bridge on the square after their various days’ work, mostly still in their working clothes and heavy boots, the smithy’s apprentice with his shirt spotted with burn marks from the forge, the thatcher with bits of straw in his hair or poking from his cap, and the stable hand smelling strongly of horses.

Their most popular conversation was in which of the armed forces they would prefer to be enlisted, which regiment or battalion they would choose. Some wanted to be with the horse, some with the rifle, and some on the high seas. All were very keen, as soon as they reached the age of 18, that they would be off to the Drill Hall in Andover to collect the King’s shilling. The older men sitting outside the ale house would listen, saying nothing. Their memories of their time in the Second Boer War, nay some even in the first, and the horrors they saw and maybe suffered there, were etched in their brains and carried heavily in their hearts.

How could they pass that knowledge and experience on to these young men? To persuade them that war might not be the great adventure they all dreamed of. They knew they couldn’t, so the old chaps carried on puffing their pipes, chewing their baccy and drinking their beer.

Notes

-James Willshire is shown in the 1911 census as occupying The Plough, having been the proprietor of a pub in Bradford on Avon in 1901; he is still there in the 1912 trade directory but at some point before 1920 he had moved again, this time to The Railway Inn (now The Bourne Valley Inn).

-We do not know the identity of ‘the pot man’ but The Plough was used by the farmers and was a busy pub at the centre of the village. Laura would not have been working on her own and the employment of a pot man seems a reasonable inference.

The Conservation Area Description says:

The Old Plough, formerly an inn, dates from 17th and 18th century. Although only of one-storey and attic, the significant length of the building is emphasised by its steeply pitched, long thatched roof slopes, and simple elevational treatment. Of intrinsic architectural merit, its location at the river crossing, and its dominance of views through the space, makes it a key building in the Conservation Area.

The photograph of The Plough, behind the bridge over the Bourne, is again one of those that came to me without indication as to copyright owner. If this is you, please contact us in the comments below so that we can properly acknowledge you or, if you prefer, remove it from this blog.

Our New Contributor

This is the first of what we hope will be many posts by Win Bourne, a ‘member’ of our history group. Thank-you, Win!

courtesy of Andover Advertiser, via Mrs Spankie’s Scrapbook

What a day!

As a reservist, Walter Sims had been among the first to be recalled to the colours. That sounds rather noble, but in fact he and the four others from the village had piled into Eli Goodyear‘s waggon pretty unceremoniously, without time to say much of a proper goodbye, as he had volunteered to drive them to Andover railway station. But of course their friends had waved and cheered, and made a great fuss of them.

As it happens, he had managed to say goodbye to his father, also Walter but called ‘Wallie’ for short. He had been ill with bronchitis for months, and at the good age of 86, had gone to meet his Maker last Sunday. After yesterday’s news of war, Walter had been able to bring forward his burial to early this morning so as to be sure of being able to attend and pay his final respects.

And, scarcely having had time to gather his thoughts, this afternoon he was sitting in a waggon with four other chums from the village, on their way to the battalion depot in Winchester to be licked into shape for a couple of weeks: then they would be off to the front. Only yesterday, he had been expecting to spend this week out in the fields, helping with the last of the harvest. And he had been looking forward to supper at The Plough Inn afterwards, paid for by the farmer!

Walter was of course sad at his father’s death, but in truth he had seen little of him in recent years. When he had gone off to the Boer War ¹ in his twenties, his parents had remained together with his younger brother Sidney. But by the time he returned, his father had moved out to live with Sidney at a farm in Andover Down, about six miles away, and his mother had decided to stay in the centre of St Mary Bourne. Walter had not yet married, and had naturally stayed with his mother, and now it was her that he was worried about. He could help her a bit financially now that he was back in the army, but he would never forget the look on her face as she hugged him farewell, and he knew she had been wondering if she would ever see him again. Perhaps she would take his father’s place in Sidney’s home in Andover Down, though he now had a wife, and he was not sure how wife and mother might get on under the same roof. But all her friends were in the village. Maybe she might persuade Sidney to come back to St Mary Bourne. But he had begun to carve out a future for himself there, and would not want to return. And so it went on, turbulent thought succeeding anxious worry. It was worse that there was nothing that he could do, not for the foreseeable future.

Walter shut his eyes, and tried to blank out, more or less successfully, all that was going on around him. That was one thing he had learnt from the last time, how to create a little world of your own into which you could retreat from time to time, during the long periods of waiting, waiting…

A note on sources

¹ No documentary evidence has yet been found of Walter’s service in the Boer War (partly, at least, because Walter Sims was a common name at the time). However, he is said by the Andover Advertiser to have served six years in South Africa, there is no trace of him in the 1901 UK census, and he would not have been called up at this early stage if he had not already seen military service.

² We know from the war diaries of the 1st Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment that they did not embark from Southampton for Le Havre until 22 August, two weeks three days later. Presumably the intervening time was necessary to assemble the reservists, re-train and re-equip them – it would have more than a decade since most of them had seen active service.

I am indebted to Twitter for this reference to James Daly’s blog, and this post:

The 1st Hampshires in the First World War: Le Cateau

When war was declared the 1st Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment was part of the 11th Brigade, in the British Army’s 4th Division. They were originally based in the garrison town of Colchester, but moved to Harrow. It was earmarked to embark for Europe as part of the British Expeditionary Force as soon as war broke out. Later in the war at Ypres and the Somme the Territorial and Kitchener Battalions bore the brunt of the fighting, but in 1914 the BEF comprised regular, pre-war Soldiers.

The 1st Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment left Harrow at 12.20am on 22 August 1914, bound for Southampton. At 7am half of the Battalion and the Headquarters embarked on the Breamaer Castle, and the other half on the Castrian. At this point, most of the men were no doubt hoping that the war would be over by Christmas.

St Mary Bourne Goes To War

A Village In Rural Hampshire During World War One

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