The CAMRA Good Beer Guide again fails
to lead us to a true discovery, but at least it got
us out-and-about, exploring parts of the county into
which we otherwise would never have ventured. This
is another part of the puzzle in understanding such
exploration – the journey is a significant part
of the pub hunt.
In the Good Beer
Guide's defense, it was strictly accurate. They said
it was 'very local' (which means everyone turns to
look at you when you walk through the door, and the
whole room falls silent); they said it was 'cozy'
(which in this case means cramped).
There was something of a reverse-Tardis
effect with this pub. The Tardis, a kind of time-machine
recreational vehicle, belonged to Dr.Who, a British
science-fiction character. It looked just like an
old-fashioned London police box, but when you stepped
inside it was not only very spacious, but could also
whisk you to the other side of the galaxy before you
had a chance to put your seat belt on. Rather like
my brother drives. In this case though not only were
we terrestrially-bound, but there also seemed strikingly
less room inside than the outside dimensions indicated.
True, there was a (rather loud) games room, but what
space does that take up, unless it was a basketball
court?
Certainly our side of the pub afforded
us one tiny table virtually in the corridor, with
a huge fireplace hogging pretty much the balance,
other than the line-up of likely characters hunched
over the bar, playing dueling tattoos with the barman.
The Red Lion as a name for a pub is
a very popular one, it being one of the symbols of
England. Indeed, in 1986, there were no fewer than
six hundred Red Lions throughout England, although
that number has dropped off a little as some went
out of business, and if replaced, were usually bumped
for some more contemporary name.
Can we ascertain
the pub's age by its name? In rare cases, perhaps,
but it would take a braver soul than me. In the case
of the Red Lion for example, John of Gaunt, the Duke
of Lancaster, who died in 1399, used a distinctly
reddish-looking lion. Could that establish the age
of this pub? Probably not. The Red Lion became particularly
popular to use as a pub name in 1625 when James VI
of Scotland sat on the throne of England as James
I, and passed an Act of Parliament to add a red lion
to the royal coat of arms.
One of England's
most famous pubs, the fictitious Queen Victoria in
the equally fictitious Walford, would have been able
to pinpoint the derivation of its name to a particular
day, that of a Royal visit to the East End of London,
but it may have been called something else prior to
that.
Entire books are written on the subject
of pub names, and certainly they are not something
to be messed with lightly. There are many stories
of villagers taking up petitions against breweries
that choose to change the name of a pub.
Litchborough gave
me precious little to write home about, though it
did at one time have its own brewery, imaginatively
called 'The Litchborough Brewery' founded in 1974
by Bill Urquhart, but they sold out to Liddington's
of nearby Rugby in 1983.
Driving a vehicle
to a pub, as we did on this occasion, is rarely the
greatest choice in the world. The best way is to walk
across a windswept moor with a pack on your back and
a friend by your side, but windswept moors are hard
to come by in Northamptonshire, so we drove, limiting
at least one of the party to half-pints, which in
turn slows everyone down, out of politeness, pity,
or a combination thereof. In this particular case,
we willingly ordered half-pints, with the obvious
intention being to drink up and go in hunt of another
pub in the neighborhood.
